I love math and I *drool* for probability. I excel at it, and can crunch numbers in my head like no-one's business. I love the notion of being a market-maker - having the best bid and ask on an item and pocketing the difference. And I can explain to my 63-year-old mother-in-law with a passion in my eyes exactly what a market maker is and how they make (and lose) money. I can stare at charts all day if I think there's money to be made. I can talk trading 24/7 if I had the right folks around me. (I may not know all the jargon, but I get a lot of the concepts.)
Anecdote -
When I was in high-school, I turned $5.00 into over $20,000.00 by selling gum and candy to my classmates]. I'd buy wholesale - sell retail. Markup was anywhere from 7% to 5,000% depending on item and time of year. One day someone tried to become my competition - he started undercutting my prices and offering buy-2-get-1-free deals. I baited him into a bidding war, constantly lowering our sale prices, until he got caught by his ego. He so desperately wanted to beat me that he ended up offering all his candy for very close to my cost in the main hall of the school. I paid a friend $2.00 to walk over with a fifty I handed him and buy out all of his merchandise. Poof - competitor has no inventory, makes no money (he sold at a loss), and my competition is gone. I immediately then jacked up my sale prices to their original mark. One day my dad went to open the fridge to get a beer. 20+ bags of candy and gum fell onto him. As he came into my bedroom to ask me about it, he saw me (his 14-year-old son) counting a stack of $10's and $20's thicker than the geometry book next to them. He immediately started charging me rent for fridge space. 
I learned, first-hand (in a high-school sort of way), about supply and demand, overhead, money management, competition, buy-outs, and the dangers of eating (literally!) into one's own profits. I also always wondered to myself - "If I bought this candy bar for $0.17, and could have sold it for $0.50, but ate it instead, am I losing $0.17, $0.33, or $0.50?". Later on in life I learned it's "a real loss vs. an opportunity loss."
In all, I am willing to work - to bust my hump. I am eager to learn.
I absorb like a sponge. I will grind it out in the beginning if I have to. I can have the patience. I took an Intro to Options class that was required for all employees at one trading company I worked for - I loved it! I loved the material and did quite well with it.
Here's the catch that I need help with.
Right now, I currently earn $100k per year doing I.T. consulting at 20 hours a week. At any point, I could immediately increase my (pre-tax) income to $200k/year by taking on 40 hours total of work per week - the business is there if I want it.
However, I am taking time off to re-examine myself and determine my purpose / mission on this planet, and the direction I want my life to go in. I am wondering if it is trading.
I really enjoy the I.T. work. I'm very good at it. But I'm not *passionate* about it. It's on an 8 out of 10 scale for enjoyment. If I *had* to do it the rest of my life, I would not be that upset. I can reliably find work, and I can dictate my own time off.
With effort, I could probably increase my earning power to $250k / year in I.T. But that would be the max for quite awhile.
My wife earns roughly $110k per year, but is disenchanted with her work. Our mortgage + daycare alone is $4,600 per month. While she won't be quitting soon, she's not thrilled about the prospect of having to work for another 5-10 years.
My wife has always pointed out that I have a passion for the markets and thinks I have what it takes ability-wise and fortitude-wise to be a successful trader.
I understand trading's not a get-rich-quick path. I know there's a lot of learning and loads of hard work, and even then results are not guaranteed. I know there's the proverbial 90% failure club.
But I am wondering, given my traits, abilities, passion, and *hunger to be excellent at it*, if I stand a chance of being very successful within a few years. I have read that it's a bad idea to focus on the money, especially on a quick time frame; instead, one should focus on becoming as good of a trader as they can be. I am indeed willing to focus 110% on developing my skills. I can live/breathe/sleep it - no sweat.
However, I'm not 20. I'm not even 30. I'm about to turn 36 with a growing family.
Even if my wife quit, I could, at the snap of a finger, bring our total household income to $200k/year pre-tax, from I.T. work.
I am going to be brutally honest with myself here. If I were to get into trading such that it consumed all of my professional work hours, and some of my personal time (learning and discussing it), I would be extremely disappointed if I worked and learned my tail off, and in 3-5 years, wasn't above the $200-$250k / year mark. So given all of this, I think I have my list of questions ready:
- If I decide my heart's in trading, should I seek employment with a previous trading company that's familiar with me, knows I'm very bright and motivated, and is also willing to offer lots of training? I just don't think I'd be comfortable (or safe), as new as I am, trading from home to start.
- Let's assume I have the necessary talent, instincts, drive, and discipline. Is $200k (or significantly more) per year *reasonably likely* in three to five years? (Let's assume we're talking trading as an employee of a private trading firm with a good amount of capital.)
- Do the rewards for trading on a private company's capital usually scale with performance? IE, do rock star results get rock star compensation? In a theoretical scenario, if I'm out-performing 4 guys sitting next to me by 40%, I would expect to be compensated 40% higher than they. (The reverse is true - if I underperform, I expect to be compensated less.)
