Quote from toucan:
I have traded from home for 15 years, stocks for the first 10 and futures for the last 5. If I were to start out today, I would go the prop firm route. However, i'm not sure I would make it starting out today as the market is much harder to trade than 15 years ago when the market was bull, bull, bull. I only traded stocks long for the first 3-4 years and switched to long/short trading after the tech bubble burst. After the high frequency trading computers took over for stocks, i switched to futures.
cheers
toucan
Agreed, market is much harder today. I thought about making the switch myself but then I thought HFTs will eventually infest all the markets.