Congratulations. The Retail Full Time Trading Club has printed your membership card, waiting for you to join in the not too distant future, when you cut the cord and go full time.
I appreciate the encouragement but "full time" trading is not something I am seeking at this point. My trading is 100% automated which frees me to pursue other income generating activities.
In that case full time means you spend 365 days a year enjoying life, doing fun things and let your computer do all the hard work.
Turns out the large hedge fund is still interested in a potential collaboration. Had a call on Friday with my main contact and two of their quants. These guys were super sharp and I was able to gather some useful information to improve my current process. In summary, I proposed developing something more targeted to exactly what they are looking for rather than trying to use my strategies with current capital limitations. My proposal was to have them track a real-time portfolio separate from my personal account so we could construct the "experiment" exactly to their specifications. We shall see what happens...the beauty at this point for me though is there is no financial pressure to make a deal happen now that I have a job.
Who is GAT? Me? I trade discretion and manually so am condemned to glue to my computer screen 8-12 hrs a day, until I can master Python and API.