not that I'm anywhere near going fulltime with my trading, but I just thought & posted about what I need to see for me personally happening before I can feel comfortable and consider trading as my sole income source...
[...
I got pretty tight rules in place as for when I'd allow myself to give it a full time try anyways.. Partly these are:
# at least one full fiscal year period where I could have lived from trading alone - net after tax & insurance that is. Including that my lifestyle aka net income at hand should not be less than 1,5x what I earn in my dayjob as I don't want to cut down too much in expenses and still need to grow that account you know...
That alone leaves me with probably 4 or more years in the job, depending on how frequently I get to trade after work & how well I do at growing the account.
# not risking more than 1 percent of trading capital when going live. ie if I find that I'd need 10 contracts to hit 'rule 1' I'd have to have an account of ( 10Contracts * 6ticks * 12,50$ -10Contracts*10$Commission and other cost) *100% = 85.000$. Let's make it 100.000$ for being xtra comfortable @ 10 contracts.
# having enough in the bank to provide living cost for 12 month without withdrawing a single pence from the account.
That'll be around 24.000 / 32k $ to not be underfunded for the transition.
there are some other factors of course, but monetary wise that's about the main frame that I'd need to consider "fulltime"
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So that really got me curious:
When did those of you how are trading fulltime make the cut?
And when would you if you haven'T yet but consider it?
points of interest are:
# trading capital
# monthly gain needed
# transition cost
# how long you give yourself
# any plan b?
and whatever else you think is important ;)
Really curious about your answers, maybe we can get Big Mike or Fat Tails and some of the other seasoned members into the discussion as well...
note: I don't want to "steal ideas" nor do I want to judge/teach anybody. I just think it's an interesting topic that many people think about quite frequently and well.. maybe, just maybe there is a pattern to be found among those who made it successfully [I doubt that too many here started with 10k accountsize and a mortgage... ;) ]