This guy is trying to lead you in the right direction yet you ignore answering his questions. You came here looking for advice and you still choose to ignore what you are being told. I'm an optimist but also a realist so let's look at the facts. You are under capitalized trading against those who possess more money, knowledge and experience. Do you really think you are just going to wing it against the best of the fucking best ? What is your strategy and what % of your account will you risk on each trade ?
I like to think of my self as a fairly humble guy but am going to say some things that will be counter to this characterization to hopefully help the OP. The OP wasn't good at school, failed as an entrepreneur, and doesn't like to work, and has 10k to trade. I am the opposite. Graduated top of my class in a world class engineering school. Successful entrepreneur in high tech having started and sold multiple firms, and a general partner in a VC firm where I have invested over 100m of VC capital and sit on the board of five software companies. These qualifications maybe make me more qualified to go full time vs the op, or you could argue that his limited starting position will make him have a smarter trading edge. Many years ago I was tired of working and traded options full time. It was my PASSION! So I quit work, and traded a 1m account.options only of course. Made 20 percent after10 months. More than enough to cover my nut. But to what end. Life was moving on. Girlfriend wanted a quality of life improvement which moved my monthly expenses higher. Trading got lonely. There were days of losses. My will to win out would overcome but you have to take the 20 year view. Can you be sustainable and absorb all of the life changes that you cannot plan for? Even with a million in capital I could not figure out how. So I went back to work. Kept trading on the side. Now have a much larger capital base. Full time employment with a salary the covers my nut and confidence that I can continue moving forward with any life choices that will emerge. If this experiment is for the purposes of understanding your own psychology then it is great. But if you believe that this is going to last for ten years then you have a very limited window to make huge gains and thT is unlikely.
Marksmanll... You chance of successful is practically zero. You can make about $50 a month in a safe manner. That is not worth your time. Get back on your day job and look for opportunities.
Based on everything you've said, you have a long way to go before taking on options trading as a full time gig. Get back into your line of work, have consistent income, and then establish strategies via trading on simulated platforms (or paper money) for at least a year. From there, start trading your funds, but as a side gig. And then in a couple of years down the road, if you still feel like trading full time, you will be in a better shape from an experience and capital perspective.
Have you considered keeping your job and trading markets in other time zones? Depending on where you live trade the Asia, Europe or US open. Use a broker that lets you trade any market in the world. If you are young and don't have a wife/kids who cares if you spend time looking at charts 6-10 pm? Also there are futures markets which are 24 hours so you can trade those.
Great post - however the part about the girlfriend wanting a quality of life improvement stuck out at me. Maybe there's some assumption here, but how is that something that's entirely your responsibility?
It didn't have to be. But happy girlfriend leads to a happy life. The girlfriend in this case is a savior in many ways and predates any trading. Any successes that I continue to have are influenced by her. So when she says that she wants Michelin start dinners or a hot tub, then that is what she deserves.
Stop discouraging people from trading. In fact you need to do the opposite. Encourage people to take out loans, quintuple mortgages, and use it to make it big day trading. There is so much money to be made and it's so easy! Do it now! These are the people that feed my family and we are quite hungry. More please! lots more
It sounds like you were doing pretty damn good trading. What caused you to stop ? You said the 200k was more than enough to cover your nut. I would guess that even if the girlfriend wanted more financially you had plenty to keep her happy (seeing how you had a million of your own money to trade with). Was it that she just was completely opposed to you trading no matter how much you were making, or were her financial needs too much to overcome with your trading and you could really only make what she needed money wise by going back to work. I have seen some of my trader friends wives (and then ex wives) never happy no matter how much they were bringing in. They just hated the lifestyle and what came with it. During the easy times of the late 90's one of my best friends was making insane money for a 30 year old. But no matter what the wife was never happy. Then in 2002 or so he went into a big draw down, and well.......that story doesn't end well. I agree with ya on the happy gf leads to a happy life. I got lucky and found one that can deal with the ups and downs of trading. Not easy to find. I think the kid (OP) should give it a shot. Who the hell knows. Maybe he will make it. At least he won't look back and say "what if". He seems to know that it is extremely tough to make it over the long run and be consistent. But it can be done. I'm not an options guy and from what you guys say 10k is peanuts, but maybe he can trade real small, get some kind of track record and raise more money or take it to a prop firm and get them to take him on. There are still plenty out there that will back the right guys.
Nah nothing like you are thinking. She is a social worker and not having high expectations other than a home in SF. But watching inflation in SF, needing a comfortable home, you just look at those gains not being enough. She doesn't mind the trading. She is blown away at the profits. Doesn't mind the draw downs which are not frequent. Those profits combined with working means that the lifestyle has no stress.