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Originally Posted by Gemini4X  Probably none of my business, but what do you consider to be a full time income? How long did it take you to get to that point, and how much up front investment? Was/is there a second household income to fall back on? |
All the answers you want are on my website. Basically, I consider a full-time income enough to cover my living expenses. I traded in my spare time off daily charts for a few years in a small acount while keeping my day job. I quit my day job and switched to trading full time in a large account this year. I don't have other sources of income, but I also don't have a spouse or kids to support, which helps. I started with enough reserve money (outside my trading account) to live for a year even if I made no profits.
You shouldn't be surprised to not have met a successful trader in person, since 99% of the people that try it fail. Everyone I know that got into the restaurant business failed, too, but that doesn't make me assume that there are no successful restauranteurs. And think of how many waitresses there are in LA for every successful actress....
The barrier to entry in trading is very low, so lots of people try it that have no idea what they're doing. That leads to a lot of failures right there. Then, you can succeed theoretically forever just on luck, which fools some people into thinking they know what they're doing until they suddenly find out that they were wrong in the worst way possible.
[edit: there are lots of interviews with successful traders in the
StockTickr Interview Series, if you want more examples. I did an interview with them, linked from my "
Best of MTM" page, that covers a lot of how I got into trading, and how I switched to trading full-time, etc.]