I wish more of the trading community were as upfront and honest about the reality of trading full time. Great video Matt! I wish someone would have given me this type of advice when I started to learn. Market tuition is real, lol

I enjoyed and benefitted from this advice. Not only it is on target, but also well organized. It is honest and realistic. Thank you very much.

Thank you Matt for an amazing and honest opinion. I’m 16 months into part time trading. Talk about entering at the top haha. However! It’s been an amazing ride so far with sooooo much learning and I’m genuinely enjoying it. My day job involves lots of curves to interpret. Like watching 7-10 curves in real time to make decisions on the spot (geosteering engineering) and I’m darn good at it. So I thought, what the heck, trading is kinda similar in a sense but boy was I wrong. I’d say I had an A+ trading training courses that changed how I look at charts completely that covered TA and trading techniques based on (price+volume+volatility) from a seasoned and proven winning trader. BUT the psychological part is as big and as important as our TA and trading learning curve. It wouldn’t be far fetched to say that the psychological part is more important than TA. I was thinking of quitting my job that pays me +100k$ to focus on trading and improving my trading skills but thank God I didn’t as I had great awakeningS. I consider myself very smart or at least above average but again THIS IS NOT an easy job. It needs discipline+dedication+humbleness+never ever thinking you made it and maybe just maybe one will be successful doing it for a living. With all of that said, I love trading so much that I’d be happy to make half of what I’m making now CONSISTENTLY. I freaking love this game and only the game will teach me the game. It’s said you need 3000+ hours to be good at something. That’s 3 years of 8 hours DAILY. Past year I had no vacations as every time I had off I was learning and learning and learning. It’s not a lot as someone for sure worked harder than me and I have to continue to be successful. Deep down I have the feeling I’ll make it one day and God willing that day will be soon. Enough rambling from me and thank you again Matt for all the knowledge you share. Definitely one of the FEW good ones out there. God bless.

Thanks Matt, I'm retired and did property development for a living. You got one payday at the end of the project. The ups and downs in property development makes trading psychology very easy. Trading psychology is so much easier as you are only dealing with your own thoughts that you can control. With property development you are dealing with so many different people, and a lot of them will let you down. Personally, I think trading is so much easier than property development. Trading has its challenges also but as long as you don't get upset when you loose a trade and realize that it's just part of winning.

What a brilliant brilliant brilliant video. Every one thinking about trading should first watch this outstanding piece of guidance from a pro. Most of the trainers or trading education sites don't talk about this reality so that they dont scare away prospective clients. God Bless

if you have a 30 or 40 percent drawdown, you probably need to rethink your stop loss and trading strategy.

Great video, thanks Matt!

Great insight !!

Very excellent, thank you

Thank you so much for this video. It is something I have wondered about in the last few months. Thanks for the actual numbers.!$$$

I hate my job but it does allow enough flexibility for me to swing trade part time and earn a good living in a LCOL area so I can keep stashing away capital. So for me there's no rush to get into trading full time, especially with the market as choppy as it's been, even though I hate office environments and taking orders from a boss. lol

Thank you Matt!

nice one

Thanks Matt

I’ve been self employed for 25 years now as a real estate investor. Making the transition from one business to another seems damn near impossible to me. I get overwhelmed just thinking about it. Not to mention the thought of losing to the market what I spent 25 years to accumulate scares the hell out of me. With that being said, I would LOVE to trade for a living. I simply cannot figure out how to scale out of one business while scaling into the other. I cannot sit at my computer during market hours while running a business that’s paying my bills. It’s depressing because I feel like I have the knowledge, discipline and capital to survive off trading, but I cannot figure out how to make that transition!

Comparing fund manager returns to individual returns is like comparing apples to potatoes.

Thanks Matt for this great video. I totally agree with what you've said and would add that one should always plan for multiple sources of income, passive if possible, before moving to trading full time to have a cover in case of big drawdowns or extended bear market.

All great points Matt, not to mention that you have to be very consistent and disciplined in your methodology if you are going to be a consistently profitable trader. All it takes is a small wandering of your mind to justify a slight change to your approach. The market has an uncanny way of "knowing this" and punishing you for the lapse. You have to be a solid risk manager. All that matters is if you have an equity curve that goes from the Lower Left to the Upper Right with acceptable drawdowns, which are inevitable. You only know this analysis not from any one trade, but after a given sample size that will tell you whether you are disciplined and that your plan is solid. I have a very consistent 80/20 win rate, but I do lose 2X what I make on a given trade. This only works if you have a high win rate. I analyze results in a 25 trade sample size. You also have to have a trade system that you have conviction in, fits your psyche, and can trade it while minimizing errors and mistakes. I don't say eliminate, because you will always do something, sometime that amazes you as to why you did that when it violates your plan. Fear & Greed, always there on your 2 shoulders fighting for your brain's attention...

Trading for a living needs a million dollars, as you mentioned in many cases, but I hope that there will be another video about those who want to trade and not withdraw from profits until they reach this amount. I mean by that small investors who own between 10k to 100k. Because I noticed that most of them go to the options or crypto to get to this amount as soon as possible, with the mentality of gambling more than investment, and they may need guidance because they are many and spread on the Internet extensively.

I love this information. Its going to be very instumental in my trading journey planning for the coming year

Great wisdom here

I think a lot about this topic. My calculations are about modest 10% annual return. Then I need 120000 EUR capital. Seems too small but standart in my country is low and I appreciate freedom much more then high living standart. Eventually I will quit if only 1 year bull market is in front and I must be prepared mentally for 2 years of drawdown. I have raised my capital recently with loan /interest is still low in our banks/, so now learning, experimenting. I have made 150% from 2018 with small cap domestic stocks, but world market is different. Hope after 7-8 years I can be full time investor. Thanks for the videos, very helpful!!!

Hi Matt, how many hours do you spend looking at charts and checking your positions, watchlists etc.. on a daily basis? I'd really appreciate it if you could do a video on your daily routine.

Thank you ,,, curious to know do you trade daily ? Are you more of swing trader ? Do your course apply to day trading or otherwise ? Thank you again

Real life income according to US census is $41k per person. Household income median is $75k.

I am preparing to make the leap into full-time investing, my biggest concern is the psychological aspects. Do you have suggestions (books, trading psychologists, classes, etc.) to help with overcoming the mental hurdle of pulling from capital for living expenses, drawdown and the guilt associated with leaving the 9-5 rat race. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I think about trading for a living all the time. It's my dream, and I'll make it happen. But currently under capitalized, especially for stocks. Wondering if FX is better market to trade for a living a bit earlier, to meet that 100k yearly income, because of the higher leverage component in FX. It does entail a lot of risk but currencies are not as volatile also. Thoughts Matt?

Make some videos about current maker, like, weekly / monthly view of you. That will be interesting to watch

I would like to see a video on contrast of how your trading was for NBF (style, size, risk) and constrains on tickers you could trade vs how you do it for yourself now?

Matt, this was great. I’m in a different scenario. I have enough capital but I dont have the skill to trade that big yet. What do you recommend? I was thinking on putting it everything on the SPY (If I have a long term CAGR of 10% I’m more than happy with that) and simply make pilot trades and go bigger until I have a solid record of positive expectancy. Any comments on this strategy?

Matt, may a scalping approach, just trying to grab 10-50 bps out of the market each day, be a more reliable system than Day/Swing Trading for a living? I seem to see it as a more attainable or realistic approach than taking on trades that you have to leave on the table for day(s)-week(s), because it seems more attainable in most market conditions, with less uncertainty. It's just grabbing a small piece each day, but over time it grows. Maybe even just grabbing 20-30 bps each day... It seems like just going for base hits instead of home runs, but still adds up nicely year end. Let's say that someone could live very comfortably off of $24k/yr (simple living in LatAm), and they have 100k to work with (and additional savings to last 1-2yrs in a drought)... Could probably rely on a scalping approach just pulling 10-50 bps/day ...?

Trading for a living is not easy. A friend of mine, had an employee, trading forex, made good returns for four years, quit the job and doing it full time, and lost it all in one year, and went back to his old job. So you need a good back up plan too....

Matt, I know you work with / personally known / heard from a lot traders, and I am wondering if you can tell us some stories ?

You can move to full time trading but ensure you can pay your monthly bills from others stable source of income.

Is prop firm a solution?