Many reasons. It's hard to explain.
When he was 7 y.o. Jose Carreras saw a tenor on stage and knew that THAT was what he wanted to be. It was his destiny, so to speak, to become a tenor. Something in him resonated with the craft. Something in trading chimes with me.
I did not know I wanted to be a trader at age 7. More like 17. I have always been fascinated by price. Why does milk cost what it costs? Or a home in San Diego? Or anything.
Price discovery. It is the last bastion of true capitalism with all the chicanery that entails. No code, no rules. Somebody wins, somebody loses. And there is a brutality with that truth that to me is more compelling than the truth.
How many people in the day to day workforce are getting by on reputation? Reputation is nothing more than well polished mediocrity. Like George Clooney in Iraq. He'd last about 10 seconds. He'd be eaten alive. So instead he makes Syriana. And now he can glom that Oscar and coast for another 10 years.
How many people hate and curse their jobs as they inch along the freeways in their metal coffins, knowing with a Jose Carreras like certainty that they will never escape the walking sarcophagus
other people call their lives.
And why? They lack 3 tools. Heart, balls. And $
And ultimately it is the cash that drives us all. Trading is one of the few vehicles to create wealth that is open ended. Even a great heart surgeon or Dr Jobe that operates on MLB players ala the Tommy John procedure can only make a range. From X to Y to Z.
Perhaps it is a failing in me. Some sort of reverse inferiority complex that drives me to validate my choice of profession vis a vis cash. Where I can compete with a dermatologist, or a political personage. Just a chance at a fair fight in the struggle of this world. To make it(or not) under my own steam. Probably some Freudian neurosis Im sure.
But, when you interview for a job and the HR director asks you why did you leave your last job and you say "Because this one pays more". Everyone understands that. No questions. No hypocrisy.
And that is why I trade. Because there is no question whether you are being effective or not. And even a Market Wizard if he gives in to hubris and starts slacking off in the work dept can blow out. Where is the hypocrisy in that?.
The odds are overwhelmingly against you. But its a fairest fight you will ever be in.
One you will never get in the world working for someone else.