Quote from Maharaja:
Don't you "day-traders" or any kind of full-time (NOT part time, or people that trade as a second job) traders feel like your not accomplishing anything? I'm not trying to offend anyone, but I've assessed the whole "becoming a day trader" path and it just seems like there is no substance behind the job. Yes, it gives you freedom, you can work naked in your bedroom, etc... but even if you are immensely profitable what have you done for society? Buying and selling of a company/currency/future/etc for a quick profit, but what is the higher end result? If you are a day trader your whole life, what have you accomplished? What will people remember you for? If your a low level engineer, at least your building things, a doctor cures people, an investor helps a company grow, a hedge fund manager makes money for people, a janitor keeps place clean, a hit man kills people (at least it is something!)... What does a day trader do for society? Does this bother any of you? Maybe it doesn't matter. Just wondering how everyone else feels...
Before I started DT, I was among other jobs a a manager of a large plastics plant.
In that job, we had a payroll of over $10 million a year, we hired local contractors for various jobs for roughly the same amount, and spent about 30 Million a year in capital projects that used local labor and suppliers. The point is this facility contributed significantly to the economy of the small town it was located in.
Some of these projects were designed to reduce pollution and were very successful at reaching that goal, to the point we had fish living in our wastwater treatment ponds. Air pollution was highly regulated and our emissions were very low.
The point is, you might think that would make one happy. On the contrary: Our reward was picket lines by environmental groups who did not know and did not care to know what was actually going on. They created a "straw man" of chemical plants = big pollution and painted us on TV and in the papers as such.
A few local residents and their buddies in the press were always badmouthing us: Their real goal-get us to buyout their nearby property at a value many times above its market value. This included frivolous lawsuits.
Pollution regulations became so bizarre, we had to have a quarterly designated "felon" who signed reports that ran to nearly 100 pages and were based on complex engineering calculations. THe law said if you did it incorrectly, you were subject to criminal prosecution. THe reality was and I guess still is that the engineers who did these calculations had no idea whether all were done correctly and accurately, meaning each report had actionable errors that could send the designated felon to jail.
So, I jumped when I was offered an opportunity to retire early with a "silver parachute."
I find DT far less stressful and I don't have to commute and I get to see my family for dinner everyday; while working I was lucky if I had dinner with them once or twice a week.
DS