Kingfish, the sad news is that you are not by any means alone in your experience and current situation. Based on the large number of hugely enthusiastic newbies that come here, post a few times - and then completely disappear - it is clear that many, many people first decide to become full-time traders and only [I][U]then[/U][/I] start to learn how to trade and find out what life as a full-time trader is actually like and what it requires from you. The lure of financial freedom, the ability to leave a mundane job, the yearning to have all that “the good life” has to offer, even the romantic image of being a big successful player in the global foreign exchange markets, all draw innocent wannabes into the business before they have established a consistent track record and learnt the business. It is strange that in any other trade or profession such an approach would be seriously frowned upon, afterall, one wouldn’t go pulling people’s teeth out without first qualifying as a dentist?
You can chose whether you want to [I]“live to trade”[/I] or [I]“trade to live”, [/I]but if you choose the latter then you are opening up an entirely new ballgame. If you are trading full-time then you are constantly drawing down funds to cover regular expenses even when you are not trading for whatever reason and also when you have the inevitable losing streak. If you have a family then the demands are even greater.
Full-time trading also impacts considerably on your choice of trading style. The longer the timeframe for your positions then the longer the delay before you know whether they have succeeded and the longer before you can access the profit.
Full-time trading also demands a lot of time researching and simply waiting for things to happen. For many this is very frustrating and boring. Trading is not so very glamorous most of the time!
Full-time trading requires a large buffer to cover all these difficult periods and uncertainties and to be able to maintain your trading capital at the required level in spite of drawdowns. The psychological pressures arising from living though negative earnings periods and the constant need to perform is an extreme addition to the already significant pressures purely from trading itself. I think you are already experiencing these pressures right now?
Personally, I would advise you to seek a regular income from another source to sustain you during your training period and forget about full-time trading until you have a consistent performance record from a specific, well-defined trading method that you have complete confidence in.
Turbo has already mentioned above that you can expect to lose for at least 2 years. Many other traders (not even full-timers) state that it took 5-6 years to become consistent. Lexys, one of this site’s most studied and consistent full-time traders traded on Demo for some years before starting. On another thread, Clint, another highly-respected long-term trader here calculated a demonstration of how much capital it takes to produce sufficient ROI to turn professional - its a lot!
If you are very good and learn very fast then maybe you [B][I]can [/I][/B]hit the road on the run, but most can’t and don’t and since you said yourself that you do not yet have confidence in your own performance then that is a very risky basis on which to even think of going full-time.
I know this is not what you want to hear and sorry if this sounds so pessimistic, but I want to state how I see it so that you get a broader view of what you are facing.