Is it too late to start trading in 2020?

[alexmr2]

Yes I would. Interestingly, I like thinking about this - albeit it's quite depressing. If I could go back 3yrs, what would I do differently (albeit this is tied directly to my style of trading).

Unfortunately though, there's a still lot of luck involved. & the way to genuinely progress fast, is mentorship, & be lucky enough for a trader years & years ahead to say something with objective value, & it clicks. The problem is, once they're past the thrill of becoming profitable, they go very very quiet & are very hard to find.

Good to see you would also do it all over again. I was fortune to have some mentorship from a profitable trader over the last 18 months. I was told the fully story from the beginning but it still takes a huge amount of practice and experience in the markets for it to click and achieve consistency

[rik]

if you only just started making consistent profits maybe look for a part time job, ideally with afternoons free if your into uk racing?
How long are you covered to pay your current expenses? its important to be comfortable with losing, if your under pressure to make a certain amounts to pay your bills you probably wont enjoy your trading and you will hopefully play it safe which is the right approach but not ideal when you should always test new strategies and try to improve
If you feel its your thing have a go but my first advice would be not to put yourself under pressure to win and if your not doing well enough never start gambling

[Big Bad Barney]

Get yourself a part time job working landscaping It'll take the pressure off and keep you physically fit....

I work part time retail in a big warehouse...(after being software engineer for several years)... as much as the job sucks I am very grateful for the ability to keep fit while I earn money (I probably walk about 10-15km a shift)...

If I could go back in time, I'd toss in the retail job for a landscaping job. Fitness...no idiots to deal with...time to think while keeping hands busy...

IMO Your goal should be to keep the pressure off somehow so you can do thinks at leisure.....pressure/time constraints is what destroys pleasure in anything you do....

[Kai]

I was fortune to have some mentorship from a profitable trader over the last 18 months. I was told the fully story from the beginning but it still takes a huge amount of practice and experience in the markets for it to click and achieve consistency

Yeah, as you can see even with mentorship over a long period it's not that easy, you need to give it your all really since trading will test you in every imaginable way. At the start I was pretty enthusiastic to recommend trading to everyone, even went to a local matched betting forum and wrote a bunch of tutorials etc to plant the seed at least since there was absolutely nothing written about trading in the local language anywhere, but people had mixed results and it didn't yield more than a few long term traders over the years. After seeing how much some people struggled I can't really recommend it to anyone anymore, instead I just try to put everyone off and try to explain how difficult it really is.

You're obviously a young guy so it would be a shame if you wasted some of the best/peak years of your life on something that may not even work out, I also started trading at a similar age so that thought was always in the back of my head. I had to give everything during the first year but after that I didn't want to spend every waking second being glued to the markets, I should have plenty of time to do that when I become an old fart myself (err no offence to any old farts on the forum since I'm 36 that's pretty much anyone older than me at 37+ ) since there is no real retirement plan with trading, you work because you want to and not because you have to.

Joking aside, a lot of people want to have complete freedom through trading but at what cost sometimes? Becoming a slave to the grind on average wage may not actually be worth it, I see a lot of people spending all of their time on grinding as much as they can instead of using some of that time to keep improving, that just seems like a combination of greed and short-term thinking and seems like they've just given up. When I look at an edge I don't only see money, that's far too one-dimensional as I'm not a greedy person by nature, I look at time/money and effort/money so in short I try to pick the best ratios that I can and use the rest of my trading time to keep improving. Because the last thing you want to do after a long session of grinding is spend even more hours working on other trading projects.

I actually started looking at "expenses" through time more than money as of late, and it makes a lot more sense to me. For example my brother is very successful in a different industry and his wages are one of the highest in my country, he considers himself to be "practically rich" but I actually consider him to be one of the poorest people I know since he can barely find 10 free minutes in a busy day to do anything. Ideally I want to have enough of both money and time to spend at my leisure, so my goal is to always work on trading approaches with the best time/money ratios.

That's all obviously pretty subjective opinion but watch out for those potential traps. Good luck

[alexmr2]

After seeing how much some people struggled I can't really recommend it to anyone anymore, instead I just try to put everyone off and try to explain how difficult it really is.

You're obviously a young guy so it would be a shame if you wasted some of the best/peak years of your life on something that may not even work out, I also started trading at a similar age so that thought was always in the back of my head. I had to give everything during the first year but after that I didn't want to spend every waking second being glued to the markets, I should have plenty of time to do that when I become an old fart myself (err no offence to any old farts on the forum since I'm 36 that's pretty much anyone older than me at 37+ ) since there is no real retirement plan with trading, you work because you want to and not because you have to.

Joking aside, a lot of people want to have complete freedom through trading but at what cost sometimes? Becoming a slave to the grind on average wage may not actually be worth it, I see a lot of people spending all of their time on grinding as much as they can instead of using some of that time to keep improving, that just seems like a combination of greed and short-term thinking and seems like they've just given up. When I look at an edge I don't only see money, that's far too one-dimensional as I'm not a greedy person by nature, I look at time/money and effort/money so in short I try to pick the best ratios that I can and use the rest of my trading time to keep improving. Because the last thing you want to do after a long session of grinding is spend even more hours working on other trading projects.

I actually started looking at "expenses" through time more than money as of late, and it makes a lot more sense to me. For example my brother is very successful in a different industry and his wages are one of the highest in my country, he considers himself to be "practically rich" but I actually consider him to be one of the poorest people I know since he can barely find 10 free minutes in a busy day to do anything. Ideally I want to have enough of both money and time to spend at my leisure, so my goal is to always work on trading approaches with the best time/money ratios.

That's all obviously pretty subjective opinion but watch out for those potential traps. Good luck

My views on recommending trading (or matched betting) to other people has changed since I first started too, not that anyone I know is interested in it. Even if they were I would refuse to teach them purely because I know that they probably don't have what it takes and I would have guilt of the money that they would most likely lose before giving up.

I agree on the time/money and effort/money ratios too, it's the ratio that counts not the total money. A good example of where that applies would be an investment banker or manager working 50-100 hours per week. Which also touches on the other side, when you come out at the other end and your computer becomes a money printing machine, can you break away from that? I have already missed some days with family because I was keen to trade. I do not want to look back and see that I missed many precious memories and experiences with friends and family. Fortunately trading allows for more flexibility than a job if you manage your social life outside of it properly, it may just be painful to think in terms of what that weekend visiting relatives cost you in terms of the profits you missed

[Kai]

IMO Your goal should be to keep the pressure off somehow so you can do thinks at leisure.....pressure/time constraints is what destroys pleasure in anything you do....

A bit offtopic John but I've been meaning to ask you for a while, is your username a reference to Lt. Colonel John Sheppard of Atlantis?

Which also touches on the other side, when you come out at the other end and your computer becomes a money printing machine, can you break away from that? I have already missed some days with family because I was keen to trade. I do not want to look back and see that I missed many precious memories and experiences with friends and family. Fortunately trading allows for more flexibility than a job if you manage your social life outside of it properly, it may just be painful to think in terms of what that weekend visiting relatives cost you in terms of the profits you missed

I'm sure that's for you to find out on your own, like I mentioned, trading will test you in every imaginable way and you will get a chance to find out everything about yourself and your priorities, both good and bad

I have a feeling that you're not from the UK, if that's the case then it's not a bad idea to have a long think about trading long term and what it means because chances are that you'd either be trading from restricted or semi-restricted regions, there are a lot of things that our Brit and Aussie colleagues take for granted. I can give you a few questions that you don't need to actually reply to, it's just something you may want to think about (I guess same goes for anyone similar) either now or at a later point.

1. Are you going to be ready for higher rates of Premium Charge in terms of commission generated?

2. Can you safely invest your profits in bigger things like real estate etc in your country?

3. Do you even have safe bank accounts that can hold larger sums of money in your country?

4. Would you be willing to leave everything and everyone behind to start a new life in the UK in order to fulfill the full potential of trading?

5. If you're moving to the UK how are you going to meet the legal requirements for a permanent visa if gambling income is not taxable?

These are just some of the questions and potential obstacles that a lot of people outside the UK have to deal with, and they are kind of related so answering one or two may not be enough, you need to have a clear answer for all of them. Every decent trader should have the ability and option to at the very least grind all sorts of markets 24/7 but it's not as straightforward as being able to "print money" and thinking that the job is done, that's when real problems can only start. It may seem like you're printing money because you're seemingly creating money/income out of thin air and out of the comfort of your home in maybe your undies, but what you're effectively doing is fully utilizing an extremely difficult skillset where you're risking your own money to generate more of it. Can't ever take that for granted

[Big Bad Barney]

A bit offtopic John but I've been meaning to ask you for a while, is your username a reference to Lt. Colonel John Sheppard of Atlantis?

hehe it could be, but I'd have to check with my parents. (It's my real name.) They're both accountants by trade so not sure science fiction military role models would be up their ally (I never seen the show). On the other hand I did briefly consider the military after struggling with motivation to complete my university studies. Thankfully they didn't want me. haha. So no Lt Colonel for me.

[Kai]

A bit offtopic John but I've been meaning to ask you for a while, is your username a reference to Lt. Colonel John Sheppard of Atlantis?

hehe it could be, but I'd have to check with my parents. (It's my real name.) They're both accountants by trade so not sure science fiction military role models would be up their ally (I never seen the show). On the other hand I did briefly consider the military after struggling with motivation to complete my university studies. Thankfully they didn't want me. haha. So no Lt Colonel for me.

Still a banger name, I am very jealous There's another John Shepard (one p) protagonist in the Mass Effect series too, and both of them have millions of fans around the world FYI.

[jimibt]

A bit offtopic John but I've been meaning to ask you for a while, is your username a reference to Lt. Colonel John Sheppard of Atlantis?

hehe it could be, but I'd have to check with my parents. (It's my real name.) They're both accountants by trade so not sure science fiction military role models would be up their ally (I never seen the show). On the other hand I did briefly consider the military after struggling with motivation to complete my university studies. Thankfully they didn't want me. haha. So no Lt Colonel for me.

Still a banger name, I am very jealous There's another John Shepard (one p) protagonist in the Mass Effect series too, and both of them have millions of fans around the world FYI.

well, my *proper name* is *James Tollan*. Seems that Gerard Butler was on my tail back in the 201x's : https://collider.com/gerard-butler-manhunt/

think i outwitted him as looks like the project never came into fruition -phew

[btw] - i only know about this project as my kids teased me at the time telling me that my secret was out!!

[Kai]

hehe it could be, but I'd have to check with my parents. (It's my real name.) They're both accountants by trade so not sure science fiction military role models would be up their ally (I never seen the show). On the other hand I did briefly consider the military after struggling with motivation to complete my university studies. Thankfully they didn't want me. haha. So no Lt Colonel for me.

Still a banger name, I am very jealous There's another John Shepard (one p) protagonist in the Mass Effect series too, and both of them have millions of fans around the world FYI.

well, my *proper name* is *James Tollan*. Seems that Gerard Butler was on my tail back in the 201x's : https://collider.com/gerard-butler-manhunt/

think i outwitted him as looks like the project never came into fruition -phew

You Googled yourself, didn't you

[jimibt]

Still a banger name, I am very jealous There's another John Shepard (one p) protagonist in the Mass Effect series too, and both of them have millions of fans around the world FYI.

well, my *proper name* is *James Tollan*. Seems that Gerard Butler was on my tail back in the 201x's : https://collider.com/gerard-butler-manhunt/

think i outwitted him as looks like the project never came into fruition -phew

You Googled yourself, didn't you

lol -see my edit, after your comment

[alexmr2]

Get yourself a part time job working landscaping It'll take the pressure off and keep you physically fit....

Are you the gardener from the Greg Secker forex trader advert? People who keep getting this advert on Youtube like I do will know what I mean .

"Today I'm going to teach my gardener how to have green fingers of a different kind to prove how easy trading is" *teaches his gardener how to trade profitably on Forex in 2 hours and makes over £300 profit on day one* "Now click the link to sign up for the course!"

[alexmr2]

I have a feeling that you're not from the UK

I'm from Scotland so you are sort of right

Lots of good points about thinking long-term and investing

[Kai]

I have a feeling that you're not from the UK

I'm from Scotland so you are sort of right

Lots of good points about thinking long-term and investing

Eh, close enough Can ignore my last post then, I think those only sort of apply to filthy foreigners like myself

[Tuco]

...it's never too late to do anything - like all things though, your success will depend upon how much you want to succeed and how much time you will invest in learning from others and teaching yourself.

Good luck to you.