Career trader's perspective on living off trading profits vs living on salary?

[Spearhead]

Wrong, your not a trader unless you place trades.

Professional Traders = Makes a living off.

Semi Pro trader = Makes a profit from.

Even though I've been FT for years now, I never saw myself as a "professional trader". I guess I equate "professional trader" as someone who works in the industry (prop trader at bank, hedge fund, etc), not a home-based retail trader.

I think FT home-based retail trader has such a bad connotation that to call it a "professional" seems like overstating. I absolutely respect myself, but I don't particularly respect this profession since it's a fool's errand for most that attempt it.

 

[Turveyd]

Even though I've been FT for years now, I never saw myself as a "professional trader". I guess I equate "professional trader" as someone who works in the industry (prop trader at bank, hedge fund, etc), not a home-based retail trader.

I think FT home-based retail trader has such a bad connotation that to call it a "professional" seems like overstating. I absolutely respect myself, but I don't particularly respect this profession since it's a fool's errand for most that attempt it.

Just the definition, what ever gets you through the day and all that.

Your not actually doing anything, but moving money from the weak to yourself, which is a bit of a dilemma, but I've done a lot for the world already so guess screw it and what ever it takes to survive and have some fun.

 

[tiddlywinks]

Being from the UK, that's only an issue if your in the USA

But yeah any long term suckers I mean holders are investors by nature.

I think student is only an option, if there undergoing some kinda training by someone else, then fair enough.

Hobby trader for years, although not demo $100 throw away account so might aswell of been demo.

Thanks for the gentle reminder that we do not live in a one-government world! Lucky for you I think. :eek:

As to the student label... unlike other "hobbies", for instance a Luthier, or sailboating, in trading there is no useful product and there is no useful activity. Money is the by-product of trading well. I suppose someone could think identification of profitable trading opportunities is a hobby, but to me that would be like being a luthier with smell being his only sense, or a sailboater with aquaphobia... enjoyment from a journey to absolutely nowhere (imo). No matter. It's semantics. The desired result isn't and doesn't need to be money-centric. To each their own.

Good trading to you.

 

[deaddog]

I prefer to think of trading as a home based business rather than a hobby. My hobbies cost me money.

As for a professional trader, that is someone trading for someone else.

 

[dealmaker]

I prefer to think of trading as a home based business rather than a hobby. My hobbies cost me money.

As for a professional trader, that is someone trading for someone else.

No one is saying you shouldn't trade from home eg Warren Buffett worked from home till he was 42 and worth $120 million....
Steve Cohen is not trading outside money anymore, is he not a professional trader?
IRS does not consider you a trader that's why you can only write off $3k per annum...

 

[deaddog]

No one is saying you shouldn't trade from home eg Warren Buffett worked from home till he was 42 and worth $120 million....
Steve Cohen is not trading outside money anymore, is he not a professional trader?
IRS does not consider you a trader that's why you can only write off $3k per annum...

How do you classify the type of trader I am?
My income comes almost exclusively from equities.
Capital gains and dividends.
Both are taxed favorably in Canada.
I certainly don't think of myself as a Professional Trader.

 

[Bob111]

Like an entrepreneur I guess a trader should be able to adjust to changing market places. If the strategy isn't working, might have to invent new strategies to make money. If you watch the documentaries on pit traders, it showed how some floor traders couldn't adapt when they transitioned open outcry to electronic trading. But some still make it when they adapt. Some just can't adapt because they were used to the chaos in the open outcry system and found an edge that they lost with electronic trading. Evolving to survive is important I guess.

Adapt or die. I know that. Heard that before. The funny thing is-those who said that to me while ago appears to be dead now. Very easy to say, but not so easy to do. Specially in trading. If you think that for all those years I did nothing, just sitting all day and collecting the money? You are wrong. It was knew that the 'edge' will go away eventually. But there is several problems: if you are system trader like myself, trading literally 100s of stocks a day at peak-there is not much time left for search. I was one man army. Im creator, designer, coder, tester , support, data and database management etc..let alone network, pc's etc and ultimately trader. Then there is a corporate stuff, taxes and so on. I don't know who trades what here and how they doing it, but that's how I, ve done it. My day starts at 8 and ends at 8 pm. Ithen preparation for next day begin.if you can spend some time after that to work on 'adapt'part or something new-kudos to that, cause I can't. Physically impossible to me. That's one problem. The otger big one is the 'edge'. To me edge mean sure thing or very easy , very high probability system. If you can come up with those daily-great! Cause I can't. I spend at least 1hour (typically more than that) a day , working on ideas, testing it etc. Can't come up with anything that I like. Years of development, thousands of pages of code.

 

[butterfacetrader]

Adapt or die. I know that. Heard that before. The funny thing is-those who said that to me while ago appears to be dead now. Very easy to say, but not so easy to do. Specially in trading. If you think that for all those years I did nothing, just sitting all day and collecting the money? You are wrong. It was knew that the 'edge' will go away eventually. But there is several problems: if you are system trader like myself, trading literally 100s of stocks a day at peak-there is not much time left for search. I was one man army. Im creator, designer, coder, tester , support, data and database management etc..let alone network, pc's etc and ultimately trader. Then there is a corporate stuff, taxes and so on. I don't know who trades what here and how they doing it, but that's how I, ve done it. My day starts at 8 and ends at 8 pm. Ithen preparation for next day begin.if you can spend some time after that to work on 'adapt'part or something new-kudos to that, cause I can't. Physically impossible to me. That's one problem. The otger big one is the 'edge'. To me edge mean sure thing or very easy , very high probability system. If you can come up with those daily-great! Cause I can't. I spend at least 1hour (typically more than that) a day , working on ideas, testing it etc. Can't come up with anything that I like. Years of development, thousands of pages of code.

Are you letting your algos run autonomously all day long with little human input or do you put in manual trades? If its the former you probably do have time in the day to do research and development and stuff. Or use the weekends or holidays. If thats what it takes to make money again is to develop a new system. Because you're not just going to sit there until the system stops making a profit or starts consistently losing and still not do something right?

Even if it requires some human input or monitoring, you can probably find time somewhere. Often its not super critical that you have eyes glued to the trading screen. Or you can take a break from live trading or shut the system down early.

 

[tom_czr]

Adapt or die. I know that. Heard that before. The funny thing is-those who said that to me while ago appears to be dead now. Very easy to say, but not so easy to do. Specially in trading. If you think that for all those years I did nothing, just sitting all day and collecting the money? You are wrong. It was knew that the 'edge' will go away eventually. But there is several problems: if you are system trader like myself, trading literally 100s of stocks a day at peak-there is not much time left for search. I was one man army. Im creator, designer, coder, tester , support, data and database management etc..let alone network, pc's etc and ultimately trader. Then there is a corporate stuff, taxes and so on. I don't know who trades what here and how they doing it, but that's how I, ve done it. My day starts at 8 and ends at 8 pm. Ithen preparation for next day begin.if you can spend some time after that to work on 'adapt'part or something new-kudos to that, cause I can't. Physically impossible to me. That's one problem. The otger big one is the 'edge'. To me edge mean sure thing or very easy , very high probability system. If you can come up with those daily-great! Cause I can't. I spend at least 1hour (typically more than that) a day , working on ideas, testing it etc. Can't come up with anything that I like. Years of development, thousands of pages of code.

Uff... I would be not happy to live like that. This is why I focus on trading styles that can be automated - fully quantitative approach. Trading (supervision of systems) and administrastive stuff takes me on average half hour to one hour a day.

Rest of day is used for relax and time with family for now... or statistical research of markets, systems development, reading books - if I feel it is needed.
Spare time is more important for me than another working system - and if we have long term stable performance, we can make more money by providing our services (like managing money, signal providing, software providing ...) to others instead of trying to develop new and new systems all the time.

You know, we live only once. Happiness, family, enjoying live is more important...

 

[Turveyd]

Uff... I would be not happy to live like that. This is why I focus on trading styles that can be automated - fully quantitative approach. Trading (supervision of systems) and administrastive stuff takes me on average half hour to one hour a day.

Rest of day is used for relax and time with family for now... or statistical research of markets, systems development, reading books - if I feel it is needed.
Spare time is more important for me than another working system - and if we have long term stable performance, we can make more money by providing our services (like managing money, signal providing, software providing ...) to others instead of trying to develop new and new systems all the time.

You know, we live only once. Happiness, family, enjoying live is more important...

I ofcouse being super lazy love the idea of automated, but I wasted 6months on it, yes I've got a better method to automate but still nah not wasting more time on it.

Crack it CHECK!!
GO HARD! Just started!
Grow account!
Trade Part time and still make a killing.