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This was a question asked on Quora ” Is trading for a living possible?” Below is my answer.See the original answer here and follow me on Quora here
Q: Is trading for a living possible? Do you know anyone who earns decent money on trading on a regular basis? If yes, what method does he use and how big is his capital?
A: What you should do is ask these questions to yourself. Do you think its possible? Do you want it to be possible? Because on an opinionated board like this you will get a handful of people telling you ” Hell yea trading rocks” and then another handful that will tell you ” Trading sucks I lost all my money”. What matters is what you believe and what you want. If this is your dream nothing will stop you from making it possible. However, since I am often opinionated too and I felt obligated to answer, I went ahead a wrote a few paragraphs for you to help out.
Yes, trading for a living is beyond possible. In fact there are millions of people, like myself, that rely on trading as income and have been doing so consistently for years. Now in my 16th year of trading I can say I have met traders of all shapes and sizes. I know many traders who earn a very modest income like 35 to 55k pr year and I know several traders who earn upwards of 7 figures or more annually. So there is no doubt professional, consistent traders exist.
On to the next part. As far as trading methods and bank roll used this varies widely between traders. In truth these two factors play a very small role in your success as a trader and it wont take you long to realize this. Sure its nice to have a huge bankroll to trade on but I’ve seen traders come in to this game with million dollar accounts and go under and I’ve seen traders with barley 2 pennies to rub together turn small accounts in to millions. The difference is always the individual and their relentless dedication to being successful. I always say ” There are those that whine and those that grind” Grinders always win.
One thing to keep in mind about methods is many traders fail because they spend too much of their time searching for that perfect method or otherwise the ” holy grail”. They see advertisements or hear manufactured back stories of trading prodigies that have discovered a “secret” that makes trading easy. I know you have heard these stories before, we all have. The ” I was divorced and broke sleeping in my car and then I discovered this secret trading indicator now I’m a billionaire, living in a mansion, working 3 hours a day with a supermodel wife” story. Trust me this is garbage and there is no holy grail in trading. To succed you need hard work and dedication. Dont get me wrong I get the lure to this type of sales pitch. By nature its easier for people to buy in to easy than to be told ” You’ll be rich but you have to work 75 hours a week, lose hours of sleep, go through emotional dark periods, alienate the people around you and suffer through countless up and downs” Most people just do not want to hear that and that is why most people are not millionaires. So anyway, what I am saying is that its not the method its the person behind the method. Its how the trader adapts that method to the market and uses it to their advantage.
As far a capital there probably hasn’t been an easier time to get trading capital in the history of trading. Most brokerage firms will give you at least 6 to 1 margin on your money and many proprietary firms will give you 20 to 1 or even more. Some firms, like ours, will actually teach you to trade then give you our capital to trade on. So capital these days is not much of an issue. However, be careful of some of these firms before signing up. They can gouge you dry in fees and margin should always be traded with caution.
Trading is more of a mental game than anything else. I would go as far as saying the reason most fail at it is because they thought it would be easier and they were never really trained properly on what to expect and what it takes to be a winner in this game. Remember what was said in the beginning. Who cares what other people think. If you want it you will get it. How hard do you want to work for it?
Hope this helps
Doug
Doug
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