Quote from chipmunk:
Hmm...but if your goal it to simply make lots of money..what's the problem?
Or are you doing this for other reasons?
It makes me chuckle when someon has a go at someone who has built a $1B+ profit business....like they are idiots!
Like aday trade making $50k a year having a go at Mutual fund manager making $500K per annum. Whos' the "smart one"?
(if you don't know give up...)
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He picked up the money management business from his dad Phil -- who basically created the template for him -- then built what is basically a slick mutual fund business wholly oriented to fee collection and insane amounts of asset gathering. The guy has more than $41 billion spread over 38,000 accounts. He might as well be Vanguard or Charles Schwab.
Let's say you discovered, quite by accident, that you had a knack for giving fantastic handjobs, and there was a strong demand from wealthy geriatrics for your services. If this was your best shot at getting rich, would you do it?
Point being, money is not the sole criterion for a desirable career path, and in many instances not even the most important one.
People who don't have enough money, or whose cash flow tends to fall short of facilitating the lifestyle they desire, tend not to understand this. But when you have enough cash to comfortably live the way you want to live -- assuming you don't have any dumb ego-driven desires, like the need to have a bigger yacht than the next guy -- this concept is much easier to grasp.
My goal is to have it all -- to make an insanely ridiculous amount of dough (relative to the average joe's perspective)
and to have the best life, which means focusing on work that is engaging, fulfilling, intellectually stimulative, and nourishing to my inner competitive drive.
In respect to the financially lucrative aspects of trading, I consider it good fortune that my passion happened to coincide with a fairly efficient means of getting rich.
With that said, though, if it turned out my passion had been for archaeology, or molecular biology, or some other field that offered stimulation and fulfillment but not wealth, I would have no problem putting personal fulfillment first.
Conversely, if I saw an opportunity to get rich in a douchebag profession, doing work that made me feel bored or shitty on a routine basis, I would say thanks but no thanks.
Again, the game as it is played is not "making the most money" but "living the best life." And it is the individual alone who defines what constitutes "best" (or at least it should be).
Furthermore, the reason I have highly aggressive financial goals is not some pathological need to become "rich" -- and what does that even mean? -- but because as it so happens, in my particular area of focus -- global macro -- money is the long-term means of keeping score. If you achieve greatness in this field, the money comes rolling in in great waves. If the measure of greatness were something different, like joining the London Symphony Orchestra for a cellist, that would be fine too.
I never said Fisher was an idiot (though his books are indeed fucking horrible). And as for the day trader versus mutual fund manager... the answer to "who is the smart one" is not cut and dry there either.
If you think making 500K a year is the winning proposition by automatic default, you are once again showing your tendency to not think things through.
It may well be that the 50K daytrader is happy, fulfilled, enjoying his work and his life, living in a beautiful area of the country while finishing work by 3PM each day, while the 500K a year mutual fund manager is stressed out, miserable, hates his bosses, hates his investors, hates the fact he is a closet benchmark fraud, has ridiculous state and city taxes to pay (along with ridiculous keep-up-with-the-joneses social obligations), and overall has a life that sucks.
Such is not a guarantee, of course, but the point is that you cannot measure life success by salary. To underscore the point, I strongly recommend
this essay by Epicurean Dealmaker on the realities of the investment banking profession.
The final comment in your post was "if you don't know give up." I suggest you ponder your own advice (versus presenting viewpoints so shallow they make a parking lot mud puddle look deep).
