Packaging yourself for a life after trading fulltime

Quote from downtickboy:

I am 30 so still young enough to do a lot of things that I want to. I am ignoring the money part for now but certainly also looking for something with upside potential.
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Honestly, I would reccomend Wealth Management at a bulge-bracket IB or Money-center bank. These insitutions use Monte Carlo simulations to create large portfolios, which by necessity contain capital market assumptions as the basis for standard deviation calculations (it's not nearly as difficult as it sounds). I think a trader would bring great insight into how to adjust such assumption to suit the model.

When I say Wealth Management, it isn't code for Broker. Most firms (all) have a unit which serves as a resource for the brokers to go to to actually create the client portfolio. The work that such a unit produces is often what lands the client. So, it's not sales, but it's also not back-office.

My first pick in this regard would be Bear Stearns Wealth Management. A friend of mine works there and has been telling me how aggressively they are expanding Wealth Management - attempting to straddle the underserved market too rich for Morgan Stanley, but too poor for Goldman (min balance 500k).

Caution: You are going to have to take a steep paycut. But as with any position that's on top of the revenue stream, the upside is, essentially, unlimited.
 
If you're a money-making trader, why would you work for someone else? You make big bucks, work when you want to and live your own life.

That'll be the first question anyone asks. Their answer will be you failed as a trader and want someone to subsidize you until you can go try again. So, basically, you think a firm should hire a failed trader to give advice to us or our clients. Its usually a very bad sign when someone will work for a lot less than what they're used to making.

Thats reality. If you dont need to work, ie, you won big, many charities will welcome you. And giving your time to a good cause, will be a great example to all of us.
 
'Seems a lot of people have some 'complex' about admitting that things aren't so great or that they haven't made any money in the last 6-12 mos. Hard to figure out why. What's the use of maintaining this 'aura of success'?


Quote from tomcole:

If you're a money-making trader, why would you work for someone else? You make big bucks, work when you want to and live your own life.

That'll be the first question anyone asks. Their answer will be you failed as a trader and want someone to subsidize you until you can go try again. So, basically, you think a firm should hire a failed trader to give advice to us or our clients. Its usually a very bad sign when someone will work for a lot less than what they're used to making.

Thats reality. If you dont need to work, ie, you won big, many charities will welcome you. And giving your time to a good cause, will be a great example to all of us.
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Quote from tomcole:

If you're a money-making trader, why would you work for someone else? You make big bucks, work when you want to and live your own life.

That'll be the first question anyone asks. Their answer will be you failed as a trader and want someone to subsidize you until you can go try again. So, basically, you think a firm should hire a failed trader to give advice to us or our clients. Its usually a very bad sign when someone will work for a lot less than what they're used to making.

Thats reality. If you dont need to work, ie, you won big, many charities will welcome you. And giving your time to a good cause, will be a great example to all of us.
More...

I think he mentioned that he was making money but not big enough to make up for the risk which is understandable. I know people that made good living trading until they hit a rough spot for a year or two. Suddenly when you average it out it does not seem like that great of money anymore. If you are just a money making trader and not making big enough amounts to make up for all the risk you are taking then there are plenty of other things that will pay more and it would not make sense to me to keep trading at some point. Moving on does not make this person a failed trader, they just realized they were not making enough to make it worth it to trade full time which could be 50-100K in year. In fact I think it is smart for someone to think about things like this with so many available opportunities out there and so many ways for someone to make more money with less risk then the trading lifestyle. The people who say "Why would you ever give up trading and work for someone else" while making 30K a year trading are the ones that need to reevaluate. That is great until you think down the road and want to have a family, buy a house, ect and realize that won't get you too far as you are making enough to live on but not enough to grow your acct size.

Also I think he said he was not wanting to go the broker route and was more into commercial real estate which is a completely different field. So your comments were off base here.

I noticed most of the posts (I guess including mine) did not even try and answer the asked question. It seems downtickboy already knows what he wants to do so he was not looking for career suggestions. He was asking how to put together a trading background in away that could be sold to a potential employer since the trading experience is so different from most careers.
 
Most people dont walk away from a good living unless theres a good reason, eg, a heart attack or they made enough.

If you're a good trader moving to a big firm and saying I made X and want Y, is reasonable. Saying you walked away because you couldnt make a living, simply says you failed at it.

I'd rather hire someone who recoqnizes his own limits, and learned something about himself, than someone who makes up a story. The story-teller will just get fired in 6 months anyways. A guy saying I failed at it because, I dont understand economics, politics, my kids drove me crazy etc, gets more respect than a liar.
 
Quote from tomcole:

If you're a money-making trader, why would you work for someone else? You make big bucks, work when you want to and live your own life.

That'll be the first question anyone asks. Their answer will be you failed as a trader and want someone to subsidize you until you can go try again. So, basically, you think a firm should hire a failed trader to give advice to us or our clients. Its usually a very bad sign when someone will work for a lot less than what they're used to making.

Thats reality. If you dont need to work, ie, you won big, many charities will welcome you. And giving your time to a good cause, will be a great example to all of us.
More...

I would agree with most of what cornhole said so I won't go over that again. I said I did not want to be a broker, have been looking an entirely switching fields, and don't consider myself a failed trader. I am not looking to subsidize my trading I am looking to put to use other skills I have into hopefully a more enjoyable and rewarding career as well as continue to trade longer term. I am not losing money but presently not making what I consider enough money to make up for the risk. Although it has not happened since I started, trading is one of those rare jobs where you can put in a year of work and come out negative on the year. So all those who have been trading long enough to give it a fair shot and can only muster 50K in a year, you have to consider what happens if you hit a slump. Suddenly 50K turns to 25K if you hit a bad year. First I am not enjoying trading enough full time to continue doing it but also I want to move on BEFORE something like that happens. Nothing like a trader delivering pizzas so they can continue the "trader lifestyle" because they hit a slump and were not hitting it out of the park the previous years. To me that is dumb. IF you think it won't happen I have seen it happen to many traders who are independent or who work as prop traders at firms.
 
Thanks for the people who have sent some very good PM's as I understand why you would not want to make a public post. This thread has been off topic for a long time although I have tried to get it back on topic. I feel like I am just answering things I have already posted on and think I have already done a decent job explaining my REAL situation and what I want to do and what I was asking some opinions on. I will continue to respond to PM's or other posts relevant to the topic or situation. However it is a waste of time for me to keep repeating myself to the posts that are off topic.
 
At 30 anyone is dead meat for any top employer in investment advice. They look down on maverick independent traders and especially so if you haven't made it into the big time. They expect the office stiffs they take on to come in either as starters with the highest and shiniest academic qualifications or from the regular corporate ladder in the business.

Funny how otherwise sensible people entertain fantasies about the real world in business.
:)
 
Figure out your passion, then start a business with that theme. Getting a 40K a year job doing something you don't enjoy is a sure route to unhappiness.
 
IMO, trading to make 25-50K is not a viable plan because in bad years you are toast. For an individual, the only reason to trade is to make it big IMO. You have to enter the arena with the plan to make millions or else your better off getting a job with a little more security.
 
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