Should I take the leap and quit my job to trade full-time?

[wiesman02]

Quote from Laissez Faire:

Well, last weekend I finally quit my soul sucking day job. It was an amazing feeling to finally be free, although I was too tired from accumulated fatigue over the last year to appreciate it fully

I have not been trading live the last months, but accumulating as much capital as humanly possible while still working on my trading and getting at least a few hours of sleep per night. I wish I had more capital, but I did manage to save up roughly 4 months of living expenses. I also have a low interest credit line that I will not hesitate on using if I need to.

I honestly think I have a good chance at making it. If not, I would not do it. It`s now or never. If I can`t make it, then I will need to pursue a career elsewhere and let trading remain a hobby.

One thing that I believe has helped me tremendously is manually backtesting my method bar-by-bar on the 5-minute chart. I`ve gone through a lot of data and it has truly helped me learn price action and refine my rules and methodology. This is a practice I intend on continue doing even as I resume live trading.

Thanks for all the previous advice.

Regards,

LF

I remembered your posts in the ES Journal a few months back. You are FAR from being able to make the leap to a full time trader. I know my words will get lost on deaf ears, but you need a few more years of experience under your belt. But you will do it, you will fail, go into debt, then have to explain to a prospective employer why you have a huge lapse in unemployment in your resume. Good luck. You will need it.

 

[psytrade]

Stop asking permission on an F&*#$ing website for how and what to do about your business decisions - they are all contingent on things happening in the Market, and with your own cash-flow in your life, and an assortment of personal development issues and how you respond to money stresses, etc. The learning curve right now is HUGE, as chances are, you're own personal life and money situation is probably stressed by the real economy and you think, gee I better become a trader because doing whatever used to work, ain't working. If you are already rich, save your money and get into some kind of non-default low risk opportunities that yield something. You might even look into things that yield something OTHER than cash...like peace of mind....

Trading is harder then:

a) Self-Employment

b) Being an Elite athlete

I'm sure there is some hemorrhoid ridden degenerate gambler trader with $25k willing to say things are easy as can be and that might be so. But this ain't the Holodeck.

 

[377OHMS]

Quote from wiesman02:

I remembered your posts in the ES Journal a few months back. You are FAR from being able to make the leap to a full time trader. I know my words will get lost on deaf ears, but you need a few more years of experience under your belt. But you will do it, you will fail, go into debt, then have to explain to a prospective employer why you have a huge lapse in unemployment in your resume. Good luck. You will need it.

Great post.

Never ditch the day job until you are profitable and bring enough in from trading to pay the bills. And that is a tough row to hoe, I remember getting up at 4:30 to be ready for the market to open (west coast), trading a few hours and then having to go work a demanding engineering job for 8+ hours and then trying to write Matlab in the evening for my processes. It was grueling and that was in a favorable market. You've got find time to workout and to socialize too. Very hard to keep the right balance.

 

[SnakeEYE]

Should I take the leap and quit my job to HFT full-time,hire advanced programmers,co-locate servers to exchanges build trading infrastructue and shit?

 

[volente_00]

Quote from Laissez Faire:

Well, last weekend I finally quit my soul sucking day job. It was an amazing feeling to finally be free, although I was too tired from accumulated fatigue over the last year to appreciate it fully

I have not been trading live the last months, but accumulating as much capital as humanly possible while still working on my trading and getting at least a few hours of sleep per night. I wish I had more capital, but I did manage to save up roughly 4 months of living expenses. I also have a low interest credit line that I will not hesitate on using if I need to.

I honestly think I have a good chance at making it. If not, I would not do it. It`s now or never. If I can`t make it, then I will need to pursue a career elsewhere and let trading remain a hobby.

One thing that I believe has helped me tremendously is manually backtesting my method bar-by-bar on the 5-minute chart. I`ve gone through a lot of data and it has truly helped me learn price action and refine my rules and methodology. This is a practice I intend on continue doing even as I resume live trading.

Thanks for all the previous advice.

Regards,

LF

You should have 12 months saved minimum.


If you are not profitable part time, why do you think you will be attempting full time ?

 

[Laissez Faire]

Quote from SnakeEYE:

Should I take the leap and quit my job to HFT full-time,hire advanced programmers,co-locate servers to exchanges build trading infrastructue and shit?

What was the objective of this worthless post? Racking up an even higher post count of meaningless and useless drivel? I can assure you that HFT trading does not pose a threat to my strategy. Clearly, your understanding of the market is limited at best.

It`s guys like you who makes this place largely a big joke. It`s sad, because there is still a few excellent contributors here, although many left this place a long time ago for understandable reasons. The noise is simply too high.

It goes against my beliefs to do so, but I`m tempted to put both you and wiesman02 on ignore, because I HIGHLY doubt that either of you will ever contribute anything of VALUE to this place.

 

[Laissez Faire]

Quote from volente_00:

You should have 12 months saved minimum.

If you are not profitable part time, why do you think you will be attempting full time ?

Because I finally can sleep 8 hours per night

Honestly, my work situation was not compatible with day trading the US markets in the first place. In hindsight, I should have strictly focused on backtesting my strategies and swing traded the markets while saving capital. If we could see into the future, I guess we all would be making perfect choices.

That said, I`m not sure if I would have done anything else, because the truth is that I`ve learned a tremendous amount about the markets and myself the last year.

12 months of savings would be great, 24 months would be even better. But I`m not willing to wait forever for the time to be right. At this rate, I would have to move home to my parents and work full-time one more year before I could accomplish that. Don`t think so.

I`ve made peace with my choice and I know that it will be tough, but I would not attempt it if I did not think I have a decent chance at succeeding. I can see that most guys on this thread have a poor reading comprehension, because it should be obvious by now that I do not live in the US. I have many options if this fails.

I sincerely thank those of you who`ve provided good advice and kind wishes. You know who you are.

Best regards,

LF

 

[ammo]

LF,i don't know how long you've been around this biz,but most(95%) that have stuck around have busted out several times,some of the posts on here are trying to warn you...don't let it discourage you,that's the price of trading,just don't think that it can't happen to you.. i would limit myself to a daily loss and a low max number of trades per day,the number of setups in a young traders journey are few,thus you should only trade a few..the other trades you make will be the times you lose...as you have noticed ,it's easy to make money,it's hard not to give it back,learning to sit on your hands is learning not to give it back

 

[kline116]

Can any of the traders who decided to make the jump into trading full time give us an update? I'm curious to see how things are working out for you all.

 

[bone]

Quote from kline116:

Can any of the traders who decided to make the jump into trading full time give us an update? I'm curious to see how things are working out for you all.

Since another trader's market space, strategy, capitalization and skillsets are certainly different than yours - should it really matter in terms of relevancy ?