Am I Wasting My Time?

Sometimes the best things in life are free.
I used to think the same way too, which was my BIGGEST blunder. Any problem you are facing in life today has already been solved by someone else, all you have to do is connect with him.......which you are not doing.

The 90% reason most people fail at anything - they are NOT willing to do what it takes

Great to see the op back, 100k is more than enuf to work with
 
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If you live in an expensive area and jobs that are well paid, trading does not make sense. With $100k capital and possibly averaging returns of 30-40%, you will not advance anywhere. Now if your living expenses are around $10k per year, things start to become interesting.
There are methods retail traders can still use but nothing that works the same year over year. You will see markets changing and you have to adapt or die.

What he said.
 
I doubt that anyone here is making a living trading a 100K account. Can it be done, in theory it's quite easy. In reality I have my doubts.

It is tough because it leaves no room for error. There are daydreamers here who think they can average 1% a day (thats ~250% a year btw), the reality is its nearly impossible to generate such returns on a consistent basis, and consistency is key to long term survival.

30-50% annual ROI is more probable, but most can't get anywhere making 30-50k a year unless they live in a very low cost area.
 
Trading with only $100k of capital is not even close enough to potentially trade for a living
$100K, leveraging 10 ES @ $10K per contract, and average a meager 2 ticks/day will produce $250/day or about $62K per year. For US residents, that's on par with the US median household income. Factor in the favorable tax treatment (60/40 split, no payroll taxes) and that $62K trading income is equivalent to a salaried position paying about $12K higher.

I imagine decent ES traders can average more than 2 ticks/day. But, I'd expect anyone who comes out swinging 10 contracts on their first day, will blow through most if not all of the $100K in their first year.

Wasting time? Probably. I think most people will vastly underestimate the amount of time and discipline they are absolutely going to need to learn trading, and they won't have enough of either to see the thing through.
 
I used to think the same way too, which was my BIGGEST blunder. Any problem you are facing in life today has already been solved by someone else, all you have to do is connect with him.......which you are not doing.

The 90% reason most people fail at anything - they are NOT willing to do what it takes

Great to see the op back, 100k is more than enuf to work with
Let me try again:

1. I joined ET and got a lot of excellent advices, free. I don't think you can get any better advices or perspectives than what you can get from @Maverick74, @drcha, @MrScalper, @Handle123, @sle, @newwurldmn, @Kevin Schmit, @destriero , @taowave, @Same Lazy Element, @TheBigShort @Sig and others too numerous to mention. They shared so many stories, free.

2. As a result of joining ET, some kind souls (@Sig...) here recommended I took classes in economics, finance, coding from Coursera, free. I took a Coursera Economics 101 class from Peter Navarro, an Excel VBA class from U of Colorado, a Financial Engineering class from U of Michigan, a Game Theory class from Stanford.U ...

3. Borrowed Hull, McMillan from the local library, free.

I ended up bought these two books and used them as reference, not free. :)
 
Can a squawking service provide an edge to a retail trader? I mean to ask is an audio squawk a useful tool for a retail trader?
 
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