Apart from investing, I’ve run the gamut with various types of trading over the years. With swing trading equities about 20 years ago, I found moderate success (while still working). And although I didn’t have to monitor every up or down tick throughout the trading day, I found it to be very capital intensive and the probability of profit just wasn’t there for me to continue doing any sort of equity trading. So now I just invest in equities and equity based products. As far as active, near daily trading, I moved to the options market after that. I’m primarily a premium seller and have no real interest in speculating with long calls or puts (although there are multi-leg debit strategies that provide relatively high probability of profit). Over the past 4-5 years, I’ve built this methodology into a business and that’s what I now do full time. I (early) retired last year and now trade index options exclusively… mostly 0-1DTE SPX contracts, but also standard 45+/-DTE contracts.

It can be stressful at times, but also very lucrative (if treated as a true business, and not just a dabble) and the trader has the ability and desire to manage risk and follow a tested rules based trading system, it’s a pretty good gig. But like any business, apart from the trading side, you also must have sufficient capital (especially when you’re just getting started), realistic expectations and a solid business plan WELL before you try to go full time.

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Posted by BourbonDad

Somewhere on the vol surface

Member since Sep 2016

194 posts

Posted on 2/1/24 at 8:09 am to Jag_Warrior

quote:
It can be stressful at times, but also very lucrative (if treated as a true business, and not just a dabble) and the trader has the ability and desire to manage risk and follow a tested rules based trading system, it’s a pretty good gig. But like any business, apart from the trading side, you also must have sufficient capital (especially when you’re just getting started), realistic expectations and a solid business plan WELL before you try to go full time.

Jag nailed it. If you want to make a career out of it, it takes on average 4-5 years of dedication to learning and honing your craft to be able to support yourself or a family (obviously depends on how much income you need and what responsibilities you have, young single dude is ideal candidate for it).

I’ll say the thing most people don’t understand about trading is that to do it at a high level requires an absolute understanding of yourself at a very deep level.

Having the tech and data feeds is easy. We can get API connections and run our own models and all that jazz but it doesn’t matter if you have an ego, the need to be “right” or have no discipline to hold yourself accountable.

It’s one of the very few occupations where you have no boss, no coworkers, no subordinates and no customers. You can have a trading partner or mentor but only you can hold yourself accountable when no one is looking over your shoulder as you go on tilt. It’s made me a 10x better person because of it but most won’t look themselves in the mirror that hard.

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