I know lots of people who are remote traders (obviously) and in-office traders.
Generally, it comes down to this. If there is an office that YOU feel you benefit from (ie your bottom line), then you'd want to be in THAT office. I'd say that is the PRIMARY reason to trade from an office.
I know people have left their office for the following reasons:
too long a commute
too many people asking questions of them
need to be home for certain personal reasons
privacy of their strategies
One other reason that I'd recommend for people to trade from an office... you're technologically lacking. For example, if you can't save a program that has been e-mailed to you and install it, you better trade from an office.
Other than that, trading from home works quite well. Just make sure that you have reliable connections and backup systems.
You can work with other traders through I-net chat rooms that have a "select" group of traders that work with each other... make it audio chat so you don't have to type and read.
Whatever you do, make sure you can isolate yourself from your family and interruptions. If you can't do that, save yourself some money and go into an office.
I myself just DOUBLED my commute time. I moved my office to the other end of the house, so now my commute is 10 seconds instead of 5 (15 if I stop to pet the dog).
