The right choice

Hello Everybody !

Well I'm posting to have your opinions concerning my point of view about trading for a living.
So first of all, I'm not a newbie, I've traded full time for two years and was quite profitable (which means I've made 100 k€ profit over this period, starting with a 10 000 € account, not so bad I guess...)
I stopped to trade 6 months ago (I've lost some money as I took too much risk, funny to say but unfortunately as I was quite successful I became more greedy and wanted more, classic fail scheme...)
But I precise that without this loss I would have made more than 150,000 €.

Since then I've found a job as a financial controller in a small company, but I'm thinking more and more to start again to trade for a living.
In fact we often hear that it's impossible to trade for a living, but I've honestly never understood why so much people said that.
With the time the only answer which seems plausible to me is that a large part of people who trade are not well educated, weak technically speaking, and have a lot of dreams...

Just for information I started to trade futures, after what I add options to my portfolio, and at the end I specialized in volatility trading (so I traded both futures and options)

But the reason why I post today is to have your opinions on my reasonning.
Well in my daily job, I work hard, have a “ridiculous” salary and honestly I don't think the future will be brighter (the company was almost in bankruptcy before I arrive and even with my help I'm not sure that it will last over the end of the year...)
I only accepted this job because I thought that it will be a good opportunity to add some experience in corporate finance.
Whatever, here is my point, in life you have to make some choices, and one of this choice is the way you want to live. I'm ambitious, and I'm pretty sure that a lot of members of this board are too.

I'm sure that if I could have a good job in a company well paid I'll do it without hesitate, but the reality is that nowadays good jobs well paid are more than hard to find, I didn't graduate from Harvard or Stanford which makes the task harder (I think even harder than trade for a living) and the only real alternative to succeed, start your own company, is even riskier IMHO in the actual economy…

So do you guys think that I’m not realistic? Or that I’m wrong somewhere in my reasonning ?

Whether you agree or not, please try to make a constructed reasonning, I'll appreciate.

Thanks a lot

 

Any advice ?

 

Trade for a living? Of course you might, if you do it the right way.

Lots of people have made it. Bernard Baruch, Jesse Livermore, André Kostolany, Benjamin Graham, 是川銀藏..... just to name a few.


More reference on this topic :

Lessons from the Greatest Stock Traders of All Time, John Boik, McGraw-Hill, 2004

 

small traders lose, they just lose.

big traders lose, they just lose, they lose bigger, think London Whale, Jesse Livermore, John Paulson, Bernie Madoff, Jon Corzine, some of them went on and did more than just losing, they stole money from customers, started ponzis, or killed themselves.....

 

then it's sounds like everyone is losing,isn't? may i ask you-where the money go, if everyone is losing?
do you believe that investors money just 'evaporated'(as media puts it) during flash crash?

 

Go for it. If the strategy you used to go from 10k to 100k still works, then exploit it like crazy. Large losses as a result of overconfidence is a common mistake for successful traders. As long as the underlying strategy is still sound, learn from your mistakes and make sure it doesn't happen again.

Be aware that most of the posters on this site have never been profitable in their life. But there are a small number of us who make an extremely lucrative living trading for ourselves. Your record indicates you may have what it takes and its worth giving it one more shot.

 

Why not just go for it, you seem to have experienced some success trading before and like you said, took 10k to over 100k before, so why not refine and keep pushing and have another go at it. And you said, the company you work for may not even be around at the end of the year, so even more reason to pull your sleeves up and go for it don't you say? Why not.

 

Thanks for your replies!

Well I'm still thinking about it, but it's pretty sure I’ll start again the trading, even if I don't know exactly when at the moment.

But I agree that a lot of people lose, and it's hard to be successful although not impossible.

Anyway, if you really want to get "rich" (which means to me at least 150 000 € net per year) you obviously have to take risks, there is no easy way...