so much for wisdom teeth. I yanked a lot of wisdom teeth in my day, yuppers seen it all, booyah ameritrade here I come.
It's human nature to have various itches that need to be scratched. Those itches might be inspirational leaps into a new life direction .... or they might simply be self-destructive. The problem with itches is that despite the best advice from all and sundry, they are very hard to ignore. One way to deal with this in a safe way is to find a limited way in which to scratch that itch. If you are going to punt here and there - cap the trading funds to a tolerable loss and write an honest report to the wife every month. You need to get other parties involved who will ruthlessly cut you off when you are in too deep.
Let me give you a quote from our CEO. Someone ask him about work-life balance question and here is his answer : When you are a hourly worker, you get paid by the hour. When you are a salary worker, you get paid by the year. Silent... afterwards..
When you got nothin', you got nothin' to lose. - Bob Dylan. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true.
To OP: At 34, with your home, kids' education, and retirement pretty much covered, if I were you, unless the job is KILLING you, I would continue to work another 8-10 years to get your financial future absolutely nailed down AND THEN SOME. You could set aside a 'trading fund' in the meantime, so when you retire in your early forties (with 1/2 your life still ahead of you, scott free) you'd be able to piss the whole fund away without it really affecting your family's future in any way. If you chuck it all now to trade and you happen to go backwards (I know, not likely for a genius like yourself...), you will certainly look back at your decision and wonder what you were thinking. The bottom line is, there is almost zero chance you will be able to make in trading over the next 10 years (without taking HUGE risk) what you will make in your career over that time with your current trajectory. Obviously money isn't the ONLY consideration, but just know that abandoning your job right now to trade will likely be at a considerable cost (opportunity or possibly worse) to you and your family. You can keep the trading dream alive by continuing to test strategies and maybe doing a little swing trading, until you really do have money to burn.
Gratitude, what happened to "Also, would likely learn a lot from engaging in live discussion vs. just reading historical posts." You ever coming back to the thread?
"blah blah blah....I've done a lot of testing to already know that indicators etc don't work without losing any significant amount of $.....more blah blah blah" - from the OP. My man, indicator or no indicator, once you go live into consistently placing trades you will realise that a path to success lies through a forest of drawdowns, that's just life. Stop looking for a holy grail & start getting real by accepting facts. You will have losses with or without using indicators. All the best!
As the OP - who incorrectly named himself "gratitude" - has only one post and has not replied to the many helpful comments here, I suggest that we kill this thread.