Great post. Knowing how hard its been would I do it again? Maybe. The problem with trading is there is no real mentorship. I was mentored by top salespeople which was critical. There are a boatload of educators that teach over the net and make no money, 95% or higher. Teaching over the net ain't the same sorry. Being there in the moment, seeing how ppl respond to situations.
Hmmm...I didn't know till today that there were even two sides on this one. Put me in the column who believes that trading is a business.
I'm not talking about a company making $500K annual. I'm talking about simply turning a profit high enough to live on. National median I believe is something like $30K annual. With an equivalent initial investment, the trading approach will take far longer to reach that milestone. And in fact, it might not even be possible with the same initial investment.
Exactly!! The point is that conventional business wisdom is far off base. This industry is amazingly different.
Knowing where I am now, I would certainly do it again. But I'm positive that the same talents and effort would've gotten me to the same point had I gone through traditional entrepreneurial channels. That is the whole thing. In college I took a class on new business ventures and the entrepreneur. The first day of class I discovered that while my professor had successfully started several companies, none of them provided even middle class income. So he went back to school to get a Phd and become a professor. Ironic? Absolutely... but that is exactly the path of the young trader. With very few exceptions, those teaching the skill of trading are not wildly successful traders, but rather those who experienced only short spurts of mild success. Imagine of you were to go to a local businessman who was highly successful in finding undervalued mom-and-pops and flipping them for a profit. You then go to him and ask him to walk you through how to find them and do the same. Oh and btw, will you tell me about the next couple that come along so that I can jump in on them? The idea is laughable, but that is what the young traders expect. There is almost no legitimate material out there on how to truly make a business out of trading. I mean a business that generates enough return that it rivals conventional start-ups.
If you compare trading with being in business or being an employee, it is much more similar to the first than the second. In trading having the mindset of an entrepreneur is much more helpful than having the mindset of an employee.
Two comments: (1) No one says you have to be a HFT. A trading venture can be solely a day trader, a hybrid day trader/swing trader, etc. (2) Yes, trading is unlike any business -- no employees, no inventory, no brick & mortar, no fixed hours of operation. You can "open" and "close" whenever you desire. You're not dependent on the economy. You don't need to generates sales to be profitable. So trading is actually a very easy "business" to embark on, if properly capitalized. My 2 cents based on 15 years of full time trading. And when I decided to pursue trading I developed a business plan, so IMO trading is very much a business.
You're comparing a self-employed entrepreneur making $15.50 an hour (which basically puts him in the group of a median worker with the additional risk of being self-employed) to a under-capitalized wanna-be trader trying to make a 100% return year in year out. The entrepreneur's business in your example doesn't survive an opportunity cost analysis and the trader's business doesn't survive a feasibility test. Is it easier to survive paycheck to paycheck running some random business which fails a profitability-test using an opportunity cost analysis than trade for a living with a hopelessly underfunded trading account? Sure is. But that doesn't prove your point. With $30k in capital one should neither run a one-man company nor should you trade full-time. That's just my personal opinion.
We do have inventory, at least for the time we hold a position. Also my operating hours are fixed by the hours the markets are most active (when my customers want to do business with me!).