Career progression for pro traders

[threips]

Hello all. I have been trading from home for about a year now and I am looking into progressing with it as a career with a firm. Home trading is great, but it can be a bit lonely and I expect if I'm lucky/good enough to get into a decent firm the money will be be better.

I have a concern that I haven't yet found a satisfactory answer to. Perhaps someone out here can help.

What jobs to traders progress to after they feel they have done their 'screen time' and get sick and tired of being glued to their charts, which I'm sure happens to every one of us eventually? I asked one pro trader from a prop house directly and he mentioned that traders were seen as the renegades/darkside of the finance world and therefore were not readily employed by the big guys into more stable jobs. I think he was having a bad day, but it could be that there is some truth to this - it is a manual skill at the end of the day (although possibly the best paid non-sports manual skill in the world?).

Now, I know that if a trader is successful they can get very rich and are therefore free to do whatever they want. I want to be fully realistic here. What is the answer for someone who has not made enough money to retire on, does not want to keep trading from a desk and does not want to set up a prop-house or trader training company?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[NetTecture]

Fully realistic: big chance you fail. Point.

You do not fail, you DO GET RICH. Point. No dispute here. You may not get filthy rich, but taking 5000 USD a day our of the indices is not exactly something unusual - you dont need a lot of contracts for that.

Career progression? none. Trading is trading. If you are really good - maybe start a hedge fund, but the problem is... either you find a trader, or you still do the trading

Get a decent hobby once you are successfull. I know a trader owning a plane for fun I personally think that I should liberate all the homeless ferarris from their dealers.

No, sorry. No progression. But immense scalability

 

[threips]

No, sorry. No progression. But immense scalability

Thanks for the 2 cents NT. So, no progression... but do you think banks or financial recruiters see it as a negative that you tried to trade and failed... or even did well but decided you'd had enough? Or is it seen as a good thing because you are obviously ambitious, capable under pressure, autonomous etc?

 

[NetTecture]

Not really. Like so often all depeneds on your personality. You tried, it failed. You know after 8-12 months. Move on. Maybe come up with some explanation for missing one year in your resume (i did that more often than not ).

I know in my other profession it would not be seen bad. After all, I am IT specialist... Trading experience just gives me an area to work in few know what do to.

If you don't fail, you basically will give a rats ass about what other people say. Once you go home with enough money to not care, and know you can always make more (especially short term trader - if you live by trading 1-3 days per trade, you wont have bad times due to lackluster markets There is always something going on), you stop caring a lot about what some "real work" drones say. Life of a hunter is a little different than life of the drone filling up goods in a supermarket.

Especially if you are early in your life, you can always get that out as something positive. Remember trading is an independant business. So, maybe you are not a failed trader.... but tried working as independant IT specialist (i.e. generating your own trading algorythms) but realize you prefer working in a firm Sometimes a lot depends about what words you use, and from what angle you look at an item. And what career you want to have later on.

Maybe if you give me some background about where you currently stand, as trader and in your career planning, plus where you are (country wise), I could talk a little more about it Country is important - because you may run into cultural issues.

One thing, though. If you fail as a trader... noone will want you AS A TRADER. Simply because if you are not a trader, you are not a trader. But one (successfull) trader game me a story from a guy he knew. Self-Employed trader in chicago - real "owns a seat and trades in the pit" person. Blew his account, lost everything he had. Went cap driving two years, saving every cent. Then went back into trading - and remade the money.

9 years ago I switched from trading to IT consulting (switching back now). My first gig? Programming a trading system for an exchange They sort of had a hard time gulping when they saw the "special skills" section on my resume.... which put me up pretty high in their hiring list first moment. Not too many decent programmers out there... that know stock, options and futures inside out. It really depends how you look at it