I was wondering that I’m so passionate for trading and I love trading so much. I don’t want to do jobs instead I want to create my own job and also the only thing I am good in is trading so I just want to know from you guys (experienced trader) that can I look forward to make trading my full time career ??? Or is it genuine ??? Does people do that ? Plz answer me this !!!
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Only if you have money equivalent to 12-18 months of your expenses lying spare in your bank account as reserve.
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Apart from what Ankit_T said, you must be generating on a monthly basis the expenses. If both the factors are good for you, then it should be ok I guess.
Disclaimer; Views are from a non trader, an outside person.
I would say build up a regular source of income. Keep trading as a supplementary activity. Once your equity has grown sufficiently large and you have proven to yourself about your trading performance, go full time.
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Yes, It can become full time career. Do note below
- It can be very isolating and lonely job. As you can’t explain your good time and bad time to anyone( good or bad trade). No one will understand except you.
- You can take sabbatical from your current job for 6 month to 1 year and try initially and see the drawbacks and benefits.
- It depends upon your capital as Trading would definitely require large capital 50 lakhs-2 Crs to make a living . Taking loan or family’s money is counter productive and most of the people loose money who takes loan as there is always a big weight on your head which makes loosing as fear will dominate the psychology.
- There should definitely secondary source either partners income or passive income as there can be months of drawdown which otherwise be demotivating.
- There are always regulatory changes so hope you are well experienced of the process of making systems as markets and regulations are always dynamic , the edge you have now may not be there are any new rules and systemic changes.
- Trading is Trillion dollar industry so yes you can be the one. There are 10k + FII and 20-30K + DII and so many millions of retail participants. So yes you can be the one but remember only 2% succeed and 98% fails to beat FD returns so its “Trading is simple but not easy”.
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Need capital. Don’t expect to make say 100% every year while keeping reasonable drawdown. Maybe someone does that but most profitable traders probably don’t. Say you can make 20-30% per year. Then you need capital to be able make decent money. 10L capital would only give you 2-3L, perhaps 4-5L. That’s hardly enough. So you need money to make money.
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If you are not already financially free, you probably need to compound your capital year after year. What you save is directly related to your future income, unlike a job. So spending money, esp in initial years might be unwise.
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Trading is hard. If you already knew how it worked, you probably wouldn’t be asking this question.
There is no guarantee of success and even when you find some initial success ( say you had a good year) there is no guarantee of continued success. Uncertainty is part of trading and its not easy. Markets evolve, things stop working or work worse) and you don’t know if its permanent.
First 2 points only apply if you have an edge. Most people are not successful and lose money, they cant even beat FD returns over 3 years as per nithin. So if you are not already an established trader make sure you bet with small capital in initial years. It might take a long time before you find success, it took me more than 5 years. -
It might be a lot easier if you can have a secondary source of income or enough capital as buffer so that you can take some hits. Alternately, you can stay with you job and trade on Daily/Weekly timeframe where you can do all of your work at the end of the day and no need to look at markets intraday.
With all of those caveats out of the way, yes i think we can make it a career. It is mine, but still early days. Only once i am financially free i would consider it a success, lets see …
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Hey @prodeepak13
Friends here have covered most of the points. I had similar passion for markets from a very young age but the experience and mistakes that I’ve made in markets have taught me one big lesson the essence of which this wise old man named Larry hite summarised beautifully, “I have two basic rules about winning in trading & life: (1) If you don’t bet, you can’t win. (2) If you lose all your chips, you can’t bet”
Trading is one such ruthless profession where years of hardwork can be taken to cleaners in a week. So, its always prudent to ensure there’s a plan B.
As a trader, Having your time,capital and risk management is the absolute key. Hedging and taking calculated bets alone ensures this.
So, in this case, The best hedge that you can take is a main job (if you are passionate abt mrkts, do it in a field related to mrkts) through which u can accumulate capital / experience / connections slowly while taking risks so that you will have your social/ personal life along with professional life secured and sorted.
Wishing you all the very best 
Cheers man 
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That sounds exactly like a remote IT job 
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Not exactly, in remote jobs you have colleagues friends and have calls to discuss stuff while in trading you just have your screen and your emotions
You still have doubts. You need that moment when you can answer your own doubts.
It’s not about how much money you have. Some can start with 1 crore and still blow it. Some can start with 3lakhs and still manage to scale it through a modest lifestyle.
Some take years to come out at the end. Some take years to never see the light. Some click in few years.
Trading depends on one’s narrative. And differs from one to one.
For now, you have things to clear. And need opinions of others.
Till then, keep chipping. Survive till the year end. Then maybe you can answer your own.
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On the behalf of my 5 years experience , I can assure you one thing that it is the most beautiful business of all times . It will not wrong to say that trading is the hardest way to make easiest money . So , I wish you good luck for your journey of trading .
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Well meetings are not same as socializing with someone.
But I honestly think people who spend so much time trading are doing things very wrong. Let’s say you are averaging 20 to 30% a year trading with 2.5 cr on a daily time frame. You are probably waking up everyday just taking positions seeing previous day position or ending a position. You only spend like 15 mins day, rest of day is yours. 30% of 2.5 cr is 75lakhs a year. Hand expenses 10 lakh , some tax and invest rest in a index fund& gold and create a wealth cycle. This is what I feel would be great.
Now to trade in lower TF’s 5 min , 10min is kinda crazy , time intensive. That’s where loneliness comes. But I honestly think it’s not worth it. Time is what we are trying to save. So if you spent 200 trading days , trading 8 hours a day to turn 10 lakhs into 1 cr chasing every single trend , it’s just not worth it. More than returns there is very little you can do to get away from paying bussiness income tax. I mean just what can be done , trading does not take lakhs of expenses so in balancesheet there is a huge profit for which taxes are to be paid. There isn’t we can do except again to take risk to invent benami bussiness like youtube, instagram influence bussiness offsetting the expenses there with trading income to less profit or build benami shell company, pay insane level of bribes to CA , tax assessment officer. It’s quite absurd. Better to have balance in life.
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All good points, from an intraday systematic trader’s perspective, problem is this -
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There is no guarantee that you will continue to make 20-30%. So we need to diversify across different styles and systems. btw, we probably can do better than 20%, i just gave it as example. I have done decently better than that so far. But no future guarantee.
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Intraday has much much more data. Better sample size leads to better chance that edge is real. There are issues around impact cost. bid/ask issues, data issues etc but they can be part of your backtesting once you get experience. Perhaps i am wrong, but it also seems more likely that overnight systems will have longer periods of drawdowns.
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Automation largely takes the in-the-moment work away from you. But there is still always work. Research for new systems and execution work. Probably once i have 4-5 good systems, i might take a pause.
Trading on HTF is obviously much more scalable and will have much less work once ready.
So I do intend to trade Daily and Weekly timeframes ( probably my next 2 systems ) but i will likely trade them with some discretion, but supported by stats. For now, finding it hard to accept a fully mechanical system, as sample size is quite low. But i have not done the work, so can be wrong. Lets see …
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Doesnt necessarily has to be like this. Like for example if you are taking risk 2% every trade but square off half of your position at 1% profit or even 0.5% and bring the stp of other half to price you bought. We can say you have big possibility of having 0.5 to 0.3% profit. Your history might look like 0.7%, 3%, -2%, 1% …
So 2.5cr *0.5% = 1,25,000 . I think if you don’t get a trade for more 3 weeks or 4 weeks that’s when backup might be needed. Remember even on job we get paid 12 times a year after 4 weeks gap.
This is quite wrong. That’s where ATR comes to play. You can place stp 1.5 times or 2 times ATR. You can position your size based on risk 2%. Money management is important. Only time when price moves crazy overnight is if there is a news event.
But overall for intra day I still don’t understand why people don’t mind spending crazy amount of time to end up in bussiness income slabs. F&O is taxed as bussiness income. It’s as same as working for 30 LPA job as senior executive position. I am quite curious of just how exactly they manage taxes
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hehe, markets don’t respect excel calculations like these.
Trading does not give you a salary. That is not how it works, so it cannot be salary replacement if you want that. You get months under water or months when equity curve is just going up and down. That is why having a support system might be necessary. You do not want pressure of day to day expenses.
There are negatives, but on positive side i do not have to work every day. I do not have a boss. I work because i want to. I can stop and let my system continue to trade. May only need to tinker with them once or twice a year as long as they continue to work. In terms of work alone i have had much more satisfaction vs job but this would depend on you.
This has nothing to do with drawdown.
There is nothing to manage, you pay your taxes. If you just focus on taxes and spend to save tax, then you lose future income by reducing your capital.
STT is already quite an impact and then what profit you make gets a large cut. 15L might be a good number for many Indians unfortunately but when you look at it from dollar perspective its not even 20k now. And no inflation adjustment here ofc. But this is not in your control.
If you can make more/similar post tax returns via investing, then only possible reason to trade intraday is diversification. But we can do better…
30LPA is an arbitrary number. You can trade with good capital and make more, there is no cutoff. There will be limits to how much you can scale, but you can trade multiple systems/multiple entry points etc. In trading, your income depends on market and on your capital.
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Trading will Lead you to work Full Time 24 hour/Day Some where else 
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Totally agree with you:
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Trading is pure business. You can’t compare it with job . In business also you have sunny days, rainy days and some time fire fighting as well.
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In trading business it requires much more then your normal decision making as it requires psychological aspect as well.so its not everyones cup of tea.
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The beauty of it is you can start literally in 1 day and no setup cost , you can make office in your bedroom and work from any where in the world and you don’t even have to work every day.your own boss.
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The taxes,brokerage STT, GST etc are equivalent to running cost of any business(electricity, labour,rent etc).For me its roughly 5-10% of my profits. For some have managed toit below 5% of there profits.Power of stocks-subhashish pani has shown on youtube his ledger .He is managing at 4% with yearly profits of more than 5cr
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And about income tax, well everyone pays we are not special. Capital Gains makes tax lucrative for trading and investing. With many techniques it can be well managed under 20-25%.
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Also , in trading sky is the limit .some years you maybe getting nominal but some years you may even make 100% or more than that. So sky is the limit.
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Again, trading is very personal thing so there is no right or wrong.You are the only one who can judge and make decisions whether you lare made for this or not! Nobody else can make that decision.
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Its recession proof business, market was there before we were born and will be there after we are gone.
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bro everything was running smoothly up until you mentioned power of stocks, he explains things vaguely
surprised to see you following someone shady
lol, well i use to follow close to 10-12 youtubers in my learning phase and subhashish is one of them. Now i am not following anyone , just few random videos here and there. No one is perfect and trading cannot work copying any one. I learned Psychology, Price action concepts , and how to see trading as business. My systems are not made copying any single youtubers. I just take inspiration and leave things which is not for me.
I shared below :
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yes, everyone goes through this transition