How many of you on ET actually make a living from trading?
- Thread starter sneakoner
- Start date
Let's see 50 weeks of 40 hours at 7.25 is ah .......
Yes I make a living, it may not be a very good living but I live cheaply!
Yes I make a living, it may not be a very good living but I live cheaply!
Poll results are misleading. Losers do not post, winners want to brag. (just a little, well, you asked me!. )
I do not make my living from trading, but I do pretty good at it. I have a business that I live off of and rental property for investments, Trading is just more icing on the cake and to me it's fun. I wouldn't do it if I did not enjoy it or if I lost my ass doing it. I probably could live off it if it was the only thing I did.
It can be done with a fair size account. Realistically a decent trader can conservatively expect 2% return a month. It'll take a few hard learned lessons to get there but totally achievable. Forget the hype, cut down the noise and bs (lots found in here). It's hard work, learn from your mistakes. What works for other may not work for you. Develop your own plan, repeat what works, avoid what doesn't, and cut your loses quickly.
I worked on wallstreet for almost 9 years and traded for the last 12+ years on my own. (I was not front office) I worked in operations at various large firms.
During that time I made and lost many many small fortunes. Only in the past 4 years have I perfected my day trading strategy and have become consistently profitable. As soon as I started regularly surpassing my yearly salary I said why do I need this job anymore. So I left and have been Fulltime since 2015. I have more stress than I did on Wall Street, it's amazing how that happens. I'm always on edge during the week because you go into this hyper alert state from 9:30-4 daily. Your income is also now 100% on you so it can get scary. Taxes are expensive to deal with yearly if done right. And lastly I'm always worried about money despite making a livable yearly return. I'm currently up $78,000 in Q1 of 2016. My goal has and will always be $20,000 per month. I'm not looking to make a million dollars a year swinging for fences. just 200-250k per year consistently. That's how you survive in this game consistency and risk control. Now the upside is self explanatory. No more bosses and complete freedom to come and go as you please. It's like I'm off the grid completely. Went from riding on trains and subways daily and having people in my face making ridiculous demeaning requests to literally having no one to interact with for 8 hours str8 per day. I love it. Hell is other people. Especially on days when I make 5 figures I'm like where else can you do this? Of course I've lost many 5 figure days in my trading career as well. Would I recommend this job to someone who wants to do this? Absolutely not until you've made and lost 100,000 multiple times. You can't learn until you lose big. And to lose big means you need side income to support yourself. It takes years to figure this market out and I've now seen it all. It's the same patterns and pyscholgy over and over and over. And knowing that still doesn't guarantee profits. Your still at the mercy of your own disciplines. For example I NEVER EVER hold overnight positions anymore. It always ended up being a hand of black jack when you average out the wins and losses from overnights and I'm not in the business to gamble nor have a 50% win rate per day. Might as well be in Vegas if that's your thing. Anyway after too many losses from overnights I stopped. Then a few years later I made an after hours earnings play with the goal to just make 2k in the next 30 mins. (Scalping right after the report already came out) ended up buying 1000 shares and it dropped on me. Next thing you know it drops a lot further and I avg down another 1000. By the time 8pm rolls around I'm long 4000 shares and down $15,000 ( stings but nothing I can't handle) so I said well this is annoying I'll hold overnight and just do damage control in the morning since the stock is down quite a large percentage already. Wrong. Next morning stock tanks its largest 1 day loss since its IPO way past what I thought or anyone thought and I took an $80,000 loss on that day. Took me 2.5 months to make that money and 24 hours to lose it. Point being if your consistently profitable from a certain strategy DO NOT deviate. Do not break your disciplines. I had like 4 losses in 2.5 months and the rest were gains then 1 monster loss wiped out the year. Lesson learned, relearned. I will never again hold overnight and furthermore I banned myself from all earnings plays (I already stopped playing earnings before reports came out years ago, but I scalped after the reports) now I stopped any earnings related play all together. It's not worth it. My edge is intraday scalping that's where I shine period. Anything else is gambling for me.
Good luck
During that time I made and lost many many small fortunes. Only in the past 4 years have I perfected my day trading strategy and have become consistently profitable. As soon as I started regularly surpassing my yearly salary I said why do I need this job anymore. So I left and have been Fulltime since 2015. I have more stress than I did on Wall Street, it's amazing how that happens. I'm always on edge during the week because you go into this hyper alert state from 9:30-4 daily. Your income is also now 100% on you so it can get scary. Taxes are expensive to deal with yearly if done right. And lastly I'm always worried about money despite making a livable yearly return. I'm currently up $78,000 in Q1 of 2016. My goal has and will always be $20,000 per month. I'm not looking to make a million dollars a year swinging for fences. just 200-250k per year consistently. That's how you survive in this game consistency and risk control. Now the upside is self explanatory. No more bosses and complete freedom to come and go as you please. It's like I'm off the grid completely. Went from riding on trains and subways daily and having people in my face making ridiculous demeaning requests to literally having no one to interact with for 8 hours str8 per day. I love it. Hell is other people. Especially on days when I make 5 figures I'm like where else can you do this? Of course I've lost many 5 figure days in my trading career as well. Would I recommend this job to someone who wants to do this? Absolutely not until you've made and lost 100,000 multiple times. You can't learn until you lose big. And to lose big means you need side income to support yourself. It takes years to figure this market out and I've now seen it all. It's the same patterns and pyscholgy over and over and over. And knowing that still doesn't guarantee profits. Your still at the mercy of your own disciplines. For example I NEVER EVER hold overnight positions anymore. It always ended up being a hand of black jack when you average out the wins and losses from overnights and I'm not in the business to gamble nor have a 50% win rate per day. Might as well be in Vegas if that's your thing. Anyway after too many losses from overnights I stopped. Then a few years later I made an after hours earnings play with the goal to just make 2k in the next 30 mins. (Scalping right after the report already came out) ended up buying 1000 shares and it dropped on me. Next thing you know it drops a lot further and I avg down another 1000. By the time 8pm rolls around I'm long 4000 shares and down $15,000 ( stings but nothing I can't handle) so I said well this is annoying I'll hold overnight and just do damage control in the morning since the stock is down quite a large percentage already. Wrong. Next morning stock tanks its largest 1 day loss since its IPO way past what I thought or anyone thought and I took an $80,000 loss on that day. Took me 2.5 months to make that money and 24 hours to lose it. Point being if your consistently profitable from a certain strategy DO NOT deviate. Do not break your disciplines. I had like 4 losses in 2.5 months and the rest were gains then 1 monster loss wiped out the year. Lesson learned, relearned. I will never again hold overnight and furthermore I banned myself from all earnings plays (I already stopped playing earnings before reports came out years ago, but I scalped after the reports) now I stopped any earnings related play all together. It's not worth it. My edge is intraday scalping that's where I shine period. Anything else is gambling for me.
Good luck
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