Interesting to hear other people's thoughts on this.
RE: Quitting one's job and day trading
First of all, I've tried to 'day trade', and have found that for every 5 trades one is successful at, 1 bad trade can wipe out the whole profit, and this numbers game fails in time, like the laws of averages on coin flips. Hardly a basis on which to stake one's livelihood, in my opinion.
For me, position trading has yielded incredible percentage gains.
Well, when I first started I consistently lost ALL MY MONEY by trading in small caps. It took me a couple of years of diligently trading (most of it at work with a laptop dialed in to quotes,or on their internet) to turn the whole thing around and begin to make money. I even got canned once for being on the internet at work, because I was going through the firewall and they kept a record of that somewhere! I was on the internet at work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week and doing my job on the side, luckily I'm a decent programmer so I could carry it off, knew about the firewall but didn't give a damn, cause there's so many computer jobs out there.
But now all that has changed. I make 6 figures on my IT job, but only use it as a mental diversion so I don't trade on emotion and SCREW UP my successful position trades. In fact, when I'm making a paltry 800 bucks a day at my job, sometimes I'm making 10, 20 thousand on that day on the market! Or conversly,I could be losing 10, 20 K on that day, and actually being at work for a huge financial loss!
(I position trade options, which huge eyepopping gains are possible, I can tell you it takes years to perfect these methods, and incredible amount of time initially, I think only 1 in 100,000 investors can make this work, but it does work, and that is a fact, the ones who doubt I will tell you never spent 60 hours a week for 2 years analysing methodologies and actually going in there and failing 200 times till they got it right! There is a high price to pay to learn the options strategies and general market analysis to make it work)
But I've tried to sit at home but found it hugely counter productive in that I begin to micro manage, and that is no way for me to make money in the markets! It's only by riding cyclical market waves up or down, and ignoring all the head fakes and little day to day tricks that the professionals use that the real big money can be made, IMO.
Plus, the other factor I'd like to add, even if you're making six figures on the market per year, it's very nice to have that cash flow from a job. Because you hate to draw down from your accounts to fund stuff like mortgage payments and groceries. And if you make a good salary, you can treat your check like 'mad money' and just throw money around, and lavish your wife or girlfriend with toys.
So my vote is to position trade and keep your job so you don't screw it up by trying to short term outthink the market! |
