It's not necessarily a job vs. trading. I am heavily involved in sales business for the last year and must say "material" business is simply MUCH less demanding than day trading. In other words, small mistakes don't matter so much and are easily fixed without serious consequences, process itself is simply natural human-human interaction.
As one (good by his own claims at least) trader once put it on one forum:
"
After all I've seen, I believe there is more opportunity available to people (risk-adjusted) from human-to-human sales than trading. Tell me the downside of convincing someone to buy a $5M building (worth $8M) with you getting a $250,000 commission. If they don't do the deal, there will always be someone else. Compare that to the actual market risks you have to take to make the same $250,000."
I was so long in trading that indeed almost forgot how easy it is to make money in the "real world".
Now I view financial markets as still full of great opportunities, but tend to look for slightly different opportunities than grinding livelihood staring @ screen every day.
