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Strategies & Market Trends : DAYTRADING Fundamentals -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: - who wrote (1075)	6/19/1999 3:07:00 PM
From: Tai Jin	Respond to of 18137

Steve, I also have a day job and enjoy the financial security that it provides. However, day trading and working is like having two jobs (I'm also in Silicon Valley), and I just can't get enough sleep. Luckily for me, my employer is flexible and I will probably just work part time so that I can spend more time trading. I've done okay trading, but the big mistakes still happen. It's basically a matter of discipline for me - the discipline to avoid those mistakes. I could probably quit my day job and trade full time. A friend of mine did that last year and he's done quite well. I know that for me the psychology will be different since I'll have to perform to pay the bills. Will that change my trading style? Probably, but with confidence I should be able to trade the same as I do now (and hopefully better) and make a decent living. The one advantage of living here is that I can always go back to a day job if I have to. But right now I enjoy the work I do and the contributions I can make to my company, so I won't be quitting just yet. ...tai

To: - who wrote (1075)	6/19/1999 3:08:00 PM
From: KM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18137

Ouch. Well I didn't meet all those parameters when I started but I'm hanging in there so far, even after a few pretty hard knocks the past six weeks. Of course, I don't have the usual responsibilities (kids, big Sillycon Valley mortgage <G>, Jag, etc.) I guess if ignorance is bliss, I'm in Nirvana <G>

To: - who wrote (1075)	6/19/1999 3:12:00 PM
From: TraderAlan	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 18137

Steve, Great comments. I didn't go full time because I wanted to. It was because I had no choice. I had a nice career and made over 100K salary the last of the 12 years I was with my employer. Since I was the boss, I was able to set up a modem connection in my office years ago to trade "real-time" and even close the door when things got hairy. The two incomes were wonderful. Then I got into a long and destructive battle with my employer over unrelated business and left under bad circumstances. Here in Denver, I was likely one of the top paid people doing the job I was doing and my only offers were 50-60% of my former salary. As time passed, I traded more and slowly become unmarketable due to the time away from my profession. Finally I just bagged it and went the full monty into the trading and web site. One day I woke up with a ponytail, bohemian attitude and a lot of self-made cash in my pocket. Damn if I know how I got here <g>. Frankly, I still find trading fascinating but very stressful. Taking a paycheck for 20 years is way different than getting to the end of some days poorer than you were at the beginning. Alan