personally I think if you need 3k to live on, you should be able to make 9k on your account now a month. At least half of that should go to growing your account and the other half you can live on / save somewhere else. If you are able to do that now, you should reach your min of 100 k quickly. If you can't you are just not ready, you only wish you were.
Thanks for your excellent advice, I need to make 9k per month to grow my account, else 3k will be a constant drag to my account
Actually one of my biggest reason for trading fulltime, is because of the time difference in Asia, I'm trading US market from 930pm night time, till 1 or 2 or maybe 4am market closed. Get up in the morning at 730am, kind of slow way of killing myself mentally and physcially.
it looks like you are overdoing it, which will not work in the long run. Lack of sleep is detrimental to trading and your account as I found out myself this week. I had an incredible first three days (15%/10%/11%) only to give most of it back in the next few days. This is a long term vernture. So better take of some days if you feel too tired or starting to feel burned out. I wish I had done that on friday, would have saved me a lot of money. One thing you might do is reconsider the markets you trade. I trade part of the asian session in the morning and part of the US session in the evening as I live in Europe. You might take part of the european session and the first two hours of US session, that way you will still have some action and will be able to go to bed at a reasonable time. I don't know what you trade but you might also add some instruments giving more diversification and more action during the hours you trade (I trade mainly eur/usd and also indexfutures).
Thanks for your advice, so far only on trading US stocks, may try forex and futures when i go fulltime. So may not have the edge. I think i can only endure my journey to 100k first, then i'll see what to do, hopefully i will not quit before reaching my target
well, I have got no idea if what you are doing is going to work too on forex or futures, but I wish you all the best with it. Maybe try to do some research of this in the weekend, it could really be worth the trouble as what you are doing now is probably not sustainable in the long run. Even going full time pro seems hard for you and remaining trying to do what you are doing now considering the hours when you will have to trade will be totally contrary to everyone elses dayschedule in the place you are living. Remember however to take the day off when you start feeling too tired, it just won't help you reaching your goal if you keep on trading when you are nearly exhausted. My losses this week can allmost be solely atributed to the fact I was death tired. It's just counterproductive.
I asked this question in the "quitting trading" thread. Do you have a business plan? Not just a trading plan but a business plan. If you are going to go full time then this will be your business and you should treat it just as if you were starting any kind of small business. This should be a large and in depth plan covering all aspects of the business. Here is the table of contents from mine. 1) Why I Trade 2) Executive Summary a) Mission Statement b) History c) Behavioral Finance d) Trading Psychology e) Probabilities f) Personality Profile 3) Business Description a) Operational Overview b) Products & Services c) Operations d) Organization, Management, & Employees 4) Industry Overview a) Futures Markets 5) Financial Information a) Financial Statements b) Financial Spreadsheets 6) Trading a) Strategic Concepts & Beliefs b) Technical Indicators c) Risk Management d) Money Management e) Strategic Alliances f) Skill Maintenance, Coaching, & Continuing Education 7) Trading Implementation a) Trading Catalysts b) Expectancy c) Mistakes d) Support & Resistance e) Trade Plan 8) Conclusion Good Luck http://tradingcrude.blogspot.com/
Lack of sleep is incredibly hard on the body. I urge you to consider what you're doing to yourself (and your hormones): http://www.peaktestosterone.com/sleep.htm
Thanks for the link, excellent article, true that my body is in bad shape, falling ill, getting flu often, body ache, headache, u named it, high endurance needed, recently did trying to catch some nap in the morning, seems feeling better, reach office late but nobody cares, i really hope for some retrenchment package