After years of working, the best job or skill for me is trading. For which provides freedom, flexibility and also real values.
Becoming a full-time trader with consistent profits means financial freedom and being your own boss.
But what does it take, financially, socially, and physically, to beat the markets on a regular basis and make a good income from trading?
Trading isn’t as easyas many online educators want you to believe. It takes experience, patience, and screen-time to make a career out of trading.
What Does It Take to Become a Pro Trader?
Although it’s quite easy to become an independent full-time trader, being consistently profitable is what most traders have trouble with. Trading is like any other job, which means that it takes experience, knowledge, and dedication to become good at trading.
Airline pilots attend years of education and hours of practice before becoming a full-time pilot. Engineers and doctors' study for years before they’re capable of performing complex tasks. When it comes to the required experience to become a profitable trader, trading is no different than any other job.
…it will take around two years for most retail traders to become consistently profitable in the markets
However, there is one important distinction here:They won’t teach you trading at school. You need to be prepared to do the work yourself, analysing the markets and charts for months, learning as much as possible about market fundamentals, price-action, and risk management before being able to become a full-time trader. Online trading education and reputable trading courses can also help you fast-track your progress.
From my experience, it will take around two years for most retail traders to become consistently profitable in the markets. It looks like this period is the sweet spot for getting acquainted with trading foundations, getting enough screen-time, gaining experience and intuition for price movements across different asset classes, trying out different trading styles and strategies and finding the one that works for you, etc.
Naturally, the actual learning curve depends on each individual trader. Some of you will become profitable in a matter of months, while others will take a few years, perhaps realizing that they’re not cut out for trading.
There are certain psychological traits that will make it easier for aspiring traders to become successful. Dedication, emotional control, patience, and discipline are arguably the most important traits that a trader can have.
There are unlimited trading opportunities in the markets, and if you don’t know when to enter into a trade, when to exit, when to lock in profits and when to cut losses, you’ll have a hard time growing your account. Fortunately, if you develop a set of trading rules, it will become much easier to read and trade the markets.
Check out our free course “Building the Evidence”that will bring control and process to your analysis this course, we’ll take you through the steps you can follow to analyse the financial markets to find trading opportunities, how to weigh them up and ultimately how you might profit from them.
You determine your risk-levels
Independent traders can determine their risk levels that they want to follow in their trading, whereas employed full-time traders have to stick to risk levels of their firms. Nevertheless, one could argue that this perk of being an independent trader could be a double-edged sword: If you put on too much risk, your losses can significantly increase.
That’s why it’s mandatory tostudy prudent risk managementbefore becoming a full-time independent trader.
A smart way to manage your risks is to stick to a pre-specified risk-per-trade, i.e. the total risk per any single trade. As a rule of thumb, avoid risking more than 2% of your trading account on any single trade, unless you’ve identified an A++ setup. With those high-probability setups, you may want to increase your risks to make the most profits in the market.
However, bear in mind that not all setups are high-probability setups and identifying the ones that are takes experience and market knowledge.
Also, set a total risk for the trading day. For example, you may want to quit trading for the day if you lose more than 5% or 10% of your trading account. Check what rules work for you and incorporate them into your trading plan.
You pick the strategies you want
As an independent trader, you are free to pick any trading strategy you want. Whether you want a trend-following strategy, breakout strategy, mean-reverting strategy, short-term momentum strategy, or a combination of any, you’re free to trade the way you want.
On the other hand, many prop trading firms prefer certain trading styles and strategies.
A Day in the Life of a Full-Time Day Trader
Many new traders wonder how a day in the life of a full-time day trader looks like. So, here’s my daily trading routine:
1. Morning preparation: Since I am based in Europe, my trading day usually starts with the London open at 8:00 GMT. However, my alarm rings one hour earlier, so I have the time to grab a cup of coffee and do my morning prep.
I check the main news headlines for the morning, look at an economic calendar to see if there are any major reports scheduled for the day, take a look at the previous Asian session (if trading around-the-clock markets like FX) and major stock indices.
This morning preparation is very important to me, as I get a feeling for what markets are focused on for the day, and for the overall risk appetite before the London open. It also gives me time to go through some charts that I think could be interesting for the day (based on news headlines and upcoming economic reports),marking major support and resistance levelsand possible trade setups for the day.
2. Trading: This is the interesting part. Asvolatility picks upafter the London open, I am prepared to pull the trigger and open a trade if the rules of my trading strategy are met.
To stay focused across different charts, I place price-alerts above/below major technical levels to inform me of upcoming trading opportunities.
Depending on the opportunities for the day and the profits I make, I’ll either trade until noon or occasionally wait for US markets to open to catch a few more trades.
3. Daily review: Once I am finished for the day, it’s time for my daily review. Many traders neglect this part, but for me, it’s as important as my morning preparation.
In the daily review, I go through all the trades I made during the day, look for levels where I could have added to my position and increased risk, look for some trading mistakes to avoid in the future, and calculate my profit/loss and win rate for the day. Reviewing your trades is a powerful way to improve your trading performance.
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However, once you master the game, it can become rewarding.
1. You Don’t Have aBoss
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Having a boss is one of most employees’ biggest frustrations. So many problems stem from this relationship – especially in these tough economic times. As a trader, you are your own boss. You don’t have anyone to answer to aside from the market. You do your own performance review and determine your compensation.
2.You Can Make Your Own Hours
As a trader, you do not have a set schedule. If you want, you can work all week, trading stocks by day and futures at night. Or you may choose to work just a few days a week, or just trade in the mornings when stocks are most active. This flexible schedule allows you to tailor your work around your lifestyle, whether it’s staying at home with your children, spending more time with family, traveling, hobbies, etc.
3. It’s Infinitely Scalable
There is no single salary range for traders. You can make just a few hundred dollars per month or scale up to making thousands of dollars or much more. If you have a high percentage of winning trades, you can keep parlaying your profits into larger and larger positions, which leads to even larger gains. Theoretically, there is no limit to how large your trading account and trading wins can be. This is much more preferable to salaried jobs, which typically pay $60,000 or less.
4. There Are Many Styles to Choose From
The beauty of trading is that there are so many different trading styles to choose from, depending on your personality. Some traders may gravitate toward intraday stock trading, while others may prefer swing trading futures, while others may prefer day trading forex at night after work. No two people are the same, so the fact that there are so many different types of trading makes this career extremely flexible.
5. You Don’t Need a Degree
College debt is one of the biggest problems in our society right now. Because of soaring education costs and an increasingly challenging job market, employers are requiring potential employees to have even more advanced degrees for jobs that pay less and less, which requires taking on mortgage-like levels of debt. This massive debt makes changing careers, starting new businesses, moving to another location, or qualifying for a home mortgage much harder. Thankfully, you don’t need to take on student loans or spend years getting a degree in order to be a successful trader.
6. You Can Work Wherever You Want
As a trader, you choose to work wherever you prefer. You can work from home, or from your own office, of even when traveling around the world.
7. There’s No Need to Commute
Commuting every day is one of the most frustrating things imaginable. There’s little worse than getting into the office every day at 9:00 am and already feeling frazzled, exhausted, and burnt out. As a trader, you don’t have to commute. Your “commute” could be from your bed to your trading workstation, or just a short drive away from the office that you set up.
8. No Office Politics
As a trader, you don’t have to deal with frustrating office politics, including gossip, seniority, bosses playing favourites, and other hassles that most employees have to deal with.
9. You Can Profit in Up and Down Markets
As a trader, your earnings are not dependent on the health of the economy. The economy may be experiencing a boom or a depression and everything in between, but you can still make significant profits. You can go long assets that are rising in a bull market, or short sell assets that are plunging in a crisis. This fact is very comforting in these highly uncertain economic times.
And awe have opportunities for the people who are trading but don't have enough money. A skill is paid here...