Either you are a full time trader or not. If you are not trading full time its a hobby like guys who race on the weekends and pour thousands of $ on their cars...
The issue isn't so much trade signal strategies if that's what you meant by what kind of strategies that a part time trader with a job can use. You need to either relocate to a different time zone so that you can trade markets you're interested in that do not conflict with your full-time job or you trade different markets that don't conflict with your job schedule as in trading before/after you go to work. Another solution is the change your work hours so that there's no longer a conflict with work and trading. Also, because you're a newbie, you shouldn't even be thinking about trading right now. In contrast you should be putting your efforts into developing a good trading plan and that itself should keep you busy for many months or more. By the way, you as a newbie should not be day trading during your full-time work hours and to do such is just plain stupidity and not fair to your boss.
I too have a full time job in addition to family responsibilities. I mainly swing trade, holding positions from a few days to a month or more. Back in 2003 I quit my job and day traded for about 18 months. While it was a good learning experience, I prefer being able to make money from trading while at the same time getting a good income from my day job. Big money can be made (or lost) following strategies that do not require you to be staring at a screen all day. good luck! fan27
This is very sage advice for part-time traders or wannabe traders. I work at a nice corporate job during the day. I trade part-time in the morning and evenings a little. I think that's a great model. No point doing full-time. I tried and the results were horrible to say the least, but then again I didn't know what i was doing when I started out trading full-time. That was a mistake. There are many things one need to learn to be successful. I gave up on trading for a while. Now I'm back. But given that I have a sweet job with great pay and benefits, the pressure is off. One way to think about it is this. Imagine you are making $X/month from your trading. Now this amount might not be much when compared to a FT corporate job. But as a supplemental income it's really nice. Not that I'm totally there but I can see that happening shortly. Just gotta grind it out. Don't try to live the fantasy of a FT trader and rely on that as your sole income. Very few here on ET can do that successfully. Why put yourself through all that stress and possibility of financial ruins? Unless your trading is generating MULTIPLE times of your FT corporate job then maybe. Even then I would say continue to work. You get benefits. You learn valuable marketable skills. The list goes on and on. Part-time trading is the solution if more people on here try that than try to crack the impossible and burn their years(youth) and money or what's left of it.
I believe if you wanted to trade for a living, you should be confident in your abilities to be consistent. If you have a plan and you keep it, you have a shot at making a full time living trading. However, I do believe that having a job on the side can help alleviate any tensions you may have about relaying on day trading as your sole business. Especially with a family. Maybe you should save for a rainy day before making the switch so you have something to fall back on without feeling any big blow.