This is an interesting thread... I'd love for those who trade professionally and those who have their own biz to give me some perspective. I have 2 passions in life: entrepreneurship and trading. They are distinct routes, but maybe I can roll them into 1 activity to cocentrate my efforts. I make good $ right now in executive management, and I'm looking forward to my next steps beyond my current career. Although I love both entrepreneurship and trading, my end goal is definitely to make a lot of money (to me anyway . Millions, not tens or hundreds of thousands. Right now my energy is being diluted between work, family, learning and doing R&D on trading, and looking at building a startup biz (non-trading). I want to see if can concentrate my efforts in a more productive way on the trading + business front. I haven't traded seriously despite all my trading studies and systems development for the past 6 years. I have a feeling that if I can shift gears and devote time + energy to the actual trading process, I'd be successful. This isn't guaranteed, obviously, but I'm confident about things I tackle, I guess. On the other hand, I'm also looking at building a great team and doing a tech&media start up company. I have good connections and experience, and starting a company is in my blood. I know both trading + entrepreneurship are risky activities, and I'm just wondering which one has the better eventual payoff in terms of percentage of success and money made? For example, if I project forward, I can envision myself making $5M selling a company, but I have trouble envisioning making $5M trading. Maybe I answered my own question, but I also know a lot more entrepreneurs than I do successful traders, so my perspective may be skewed. Being able to make it as a trader is also an interesting challenge to me, so I'm putting the 2 activities side by side for comparison. Anyway, just wanted to see if anyone has experience or thoughts on this topic. Thanks.
I dont think you can learn do both at the same time but you can do one after the other. And once you mastered both you can do both at the same time. Look at Curtis Faith, he posts here as 'Inflector', he was a very successfull Turtle in the 80s, probably made millions as a trader then gave up trading to do startups. He came back to trading after a 15 year or so break. The point about not knowing many traders as apposed to successfull business people, when someone sells a business it becomes public knowledge, traders like to remain more anonymous.. Also far more people attempt to start there own businesses so from an absolute perspective you see more successes here too. I think the failure rate of starting a business is probably 95% not too far off trading. What percentage of startups eventually sell for millions? its probably less than 0.1%, likewise few traders end up making millions. But it is possible and you have to be prepared to pay the price.
I have made quite a few bucks in business, Here is the view: In business, its all about skills, less about capital. If you have a unique method, unique product, unique method of selling, dawn of the golden age (opportunity) such as the internet, you can startup from $500 and turn it into a million dollar business after 3-5 years of constant work. In trading, its all about skills, a little more about capital, so the same as in business, you need to obtain that unique "edge" to make money. The difference between trading and business is , opportunities do not come everyday from business unless you are in the "common" business such as restaurants/ stores etc. If you are in the high tech business, opportunities come in waves. The good thing about trading is, opportunities come in waves but you can develop methods to exploit smaller methods so it becomes more consistent. For a successful trader, to turn $1million dollars into $1.3 million dollars, is not very hard. So you need capital For a business owner, to turn $1million dollars into $1.3 million dollars is VERY hard, because CAPITAL is not easily deployable, you don't go out buying aleron chairs or new office space to make more money, but its more of a step by step method. Money can not be spent easily. So it sums down to trading = massively scaleable, if you have capital business = not very scaleable but requires less capital, but just as good. Trading = business, just a higher level of business.
One more thing to add. Business does not require a high "learning" ability such as trading. As long as the business provides good service, it can make money. Not so with trading, if you don't learn well, you won't trade well. Learning ability does not = IQ. Just means the ability to not repeat mistakes.
I like this style of trading because you can actually take a vacation and not gave to worry about every tick of the market. Not too fast and not too slow, and I wouldn't be surprised if swing traders make more than day traders because they're able to keep costs lower.
PV, I have a journal called the S/R emini journal here in ET. Feel free to check it out and see how I juggle owning a business and trading. I actually had to stop my journal for a couple of weeks when I started my second company but was asked to keep it going so I started it back again. I had been working and trading since 92 and stopped trading for a while when I started my company. Then I decided that I could still trade options while running my business. This year has been my first venture into daytrading and so far so good. I think it takes the same discipline to run a business as it does to trade. You just have to prioritize your day and be very strict with or both will fail. My company specializes in Neuro-Diagnostics so I can get called away at a moments notice to take care of patients. You will see how I have to check out during the day to tend to business. I also do all my own sales for the company. I'll tell you this. If I have a winning trade early before a sales meeting I am usually so pumped up no Dr can refuse me. So both can and do feed off of each other. I hope this will give you some insight of each discipline working together. 4re
after 17 years doing this full time and seeing 100's come and go i'd strongly recomend anyone with a wife,kids and house to have a min of 200k before they take the road to daytrading. if you're retail you need a min of 100-200k in your accounts to have a real chance. i started 17 years ago with 500k and i felt that was borderline. when starting there's lots of ups and downs and your living expenses keep coming in. think about it. if you make 50% a year on your 200k thats 100k a year which just covers most peoples living expenses. i know some guys have made it with 5k in a prop account but the odds aren't good. big capitalization gives one peace of mind and takes enormous pressure off and allows one time to succeed without pressure
I'm not a trader but I did have the exact same situation as a professional gambler. In 2002 I had a full-time job in an unrelated industry. Basically, I had been working my ass off on night and weekends (sometimes on the boss's dime) for the previous 4 years until I had enough skill to make a living at it. Once I was hauling in way more money from gambling than my day job, the decision to quit was a no-brainer. There are a lot of factors to consider though. Do you have the skills and bankroll for it? Is your stake replaceable if you lose? Can you easily get back into whatever you were doing before if trading doesn't work out? In my case the answer was 'yes' to all three questions so it was a pretty easy decision. Wish you the best of luck. Traveler