Is it likely to be a successful trader if you have a full time job?

[Wilt]

Yes, you can trade and have a full time job. I do not think you can daytrade and have a full time job though. You need to be smart enough to create strategies that work with your situation. I don't think that requires 10,000 hours, I think it requires intelligent adaptability. That is often born out of necessity. I would work on position trading. No matter what, you can execute that strategy. When you get to to point that you don't need the job, you can explore daytrading if you wish, but you can always fall back on your proven strategy until you get good at daytrading. If you ever get good at daytrading, consider that strategy a bonus.

Wilt

 

[DannoXYZ]

While I won't discount the actual amount of time it takes to get proficient, there's still a learning curve. I've seen some people quit their day jobs and get profitable at trading in less than 2-3 years while others have kept at it for decades and have never been self-sufficient. As previously mentioned, not all hours are equal and some people never progress beyond getting stuck at learning a particular lesson, such as money-management.

And "luck" is also relative. With more experience, you can see the opportunities that present themselves and take advantage of them to be profitable. Such as knowing whether a 20% uptick in a stock means a buying opportunity or a get-out signal. To someone without experience to be able to distinguish the two, it may look magical and "lucky". Also with experience, when a truly lucky event occurs, the neophyte may get away with a 10% return and thing they're king, but the ones who make a living at it may be walking away with a 1000% return on the exact same circumstances.

 

[Palatine]

Clearly trend following a stock index is the ideal solution here. Swing trading and day trading have been considered previously in this thread which I would put aside due to the reasons mentioned. Swing trading has several disadvantages:

(1) Performance dilemma: You get frustrated if your stock picks don't perform as well on average as the general market.

(2) Turning point dilemma: Very stressful when the general market is at a stage of indecision. Evaluate quickly which picks to dump/add or reverse.

(3) Target price dilemma: Swing trades are usually coupled with a limit order to take profits. But where is it? Price either overshoots the target or never reaches it, only to reverse on you.

(4) Break-even dilemma: Due to the above-mentioned, the average swing trader rarely makes a monetary progress and hovers around break-even for a long period. (e.g. a good trade is destroyed with many small bad trades all too often)

Due to these problems, an individual is better off trend following the market long & short through an index fund or index futures. With trend following you are participating in a market's overall trend and trail it with a stop loss. Targets are obsolete because a trend follower assumes that we will never know where the market actually reverses.

The focus is on exploiting the forces of the bulls and bears to your advantage and trying to squeeze out every nickel out of a trend which often lasts weeks to months.

 

[Bolimomo]

Quote from EON Kid:

Not all hours are created equal. The ones that seem the most productive is when a man has is back against a wall and a flame at his ass. Most of the successful traders will tell you that they have been there.

How can you back against a wall and still have a flame coming from behind?

 

[EON Kid]

Quote from Bolimomo:

How can you back against a wall and still have a flame coming from behind?

stand naked against a wall with a lighter in your hand, light up your deadliest fart.

Warning don't try this without parental supervision.

 

[QuikrRetirement]

Quote from Palatine:

Due to these problems, an individual is better off trend following the market long & short through an index fund or index futures. With trend following you are participating in a market's overall trend and trail it with a stop loss. Targets are obsolete because a trend follower assumes that we will never know where the market actually reverses.

The focus is on exploiting the forces of the bulls and bears to your advantage and trying to squeeze out every nickel out of a trend which often lasts weeks to months.

Although of course, it has been shown time and time again that people are incapable of doing this.

 

[QuikrRetirement]

Quote from Retief:

Scared money never wins. If you're working full time, you don't need money from trading and therefore don't need to be scared. That gives you an advantage.

By the way, Neke works full time and manages to get in a lot of trading.

And Neke has been losing a lot, also, for a while. I do not think that was a strong proof

 

[bone]

Most of my clients are full-time pros, but I do have several part-timers who are making steady progress swing-trading futures, equities, and cash forex SPREAD positions. About the worst has been scratch, and the balance are netting a few to several thousand per month. One netted over $20K in February, most of it on energy spreads.

You really do have to carefully select the spread combinations and models for that situation, but it has proven itself out. Having an electronic market open 22 hours per day and using exchange implieds for stop orders is a big advantage for my clients.

This is becoming an emerging specialty for me, and I really do have to make some unique adjustments for them versus the intraday pro trading 2000 futures per day. But it does seem to be working out - they can pay retail, non-member rates and still do very well for themselves. Most of the spread positions I teach them have about an 85% SPAN margin credit, so it really is a doable trade with a modest retail-type account IF IT IS DONE MY WAY. I cannot speak for swing trading directional flat price or any other relative value strategy like options or other spread methodologies.