This is an iteration of the ideas I tried so far. After considerable experience working with options, it's increasingly obvious to me that the domain is extremely competitive. I would compare it to video games.
There's a huge difference between doing a video game (trading options) for business success or just as a hobby. I'm letting out the hobby situation, focus on financial success. As an independent game developer or even small shop, you are competing against AAA titles and at the same time, millions of independent game developers and small shops. Game developers don't have the sort of irrational denial of reality I see in traders. Every trader and his dog are hugely successful and being successful is a given, for whoever enters the field, and if they aren't then they're the odd exception.
No my men, success in the business of trading is just as hard if not harder than in video games. You have to get the skills to make AAA-like games, like you need the sort of quantitative / probabilistic knowledge needed to trade options. You need to devise ORIGINAL GAMES as you need to devise original trading strategies because the old ones no longer sell. And the hardest stuff to swallow I think both for a game developer and trader is the fact that the original stuff might be technically a huge success, yet fail completely as a business product. And chances are like 99% of failure, for an ORIGINAL GAME OR TRADING STRATEGY. That's "way" better than 100% failure for non-original.
So I was thinking in forming an association with interested individuals and starting what amounts to an independent side business, remote-collaboration, game shop, only in options trading. I'm set for the game development analogy because I think it's highly relevant, plus besides financial experience (options quant for 10 years), I now got some 3 years of cvasi game-shop one so can definitely tell that competition is ruthless everywhere. We competed with Goldman, now we compete with Google, what's with the G-spot?
What do you think?
lol what do you have to offer to the group? Are we supposed to be impressed that you earn what a first year EE grad makes in Omaha?
