I was asked a question from a student about how I knew when I was ready to become a full time trader. The quick answer is, I really didn’t know. I mean I though t I knew at the time but upon looking back, I really didn’t know and I wasn’t ready. As I mentioned before, I was running a family business when I started to trade. I spent more and more time focused on trading and less on the business because I knew deep in my soul that trading was going to be my future. So I worked and saved as much as possible before I got out of the business and the business provided me with a great financial support when I eventually went full time but I don’t recommend anyone doing it how I did because at the time it was extremely stressful. Watching my trading account go lower and lower every month was not fun and so I resorted to trading signals and managed accounts in order to supplement my trading and that eventually cost me a lot more money than anything I made.
My advice for anyone wanting to become full time is to stick with your day job and study trading on every other moment you have free. Trade while you work full time because if you lose money you will have your bills covered. You want to get to a point where you can make more trading then you can with your day job and you can do it very consistently. This will take a long time to acquire this skill and even when you do it will shift when you actually quit your day job because now you must make money to pay your bills. So knowing this, you will want a buffer of many months expenses saved up before you decide to quit your job. This way your expenses can be paid from their as opposes to your trading account.
Whatever you do, DO NOT RUSH THIS PROCESS! It will take time to acquire the skill set to trade professionally and just when you think you’re there, it will take longer so look at this as a 5 – 10 year plan, not something you can accomplish within 5 years although some of you might be able to do this it is just not considered the norm. Think about how long it would take to start a business and live off the profits of it, it’s the same thing.
Kevin Araujo
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