(I haven’t read any more of the thread than the two previous posts :8: ).
Your long and interesting post above is one to which I’d love to be able to reply in detail, to offer observations, maybe even suggestions, PMH. For all sorts of reasons.
I really can’t, though, in a way that’s going to be of any help or even interest to you, simply because I just have [B][U]no[/U][/B] insight into others’ circumstances at all - for reasons you’re mostly aware of - and it seems to me that that’s what this all revolves around, really. (And that’s without even mentioning the fact that our trading interests/outlooks are so different, as well: I know nothing about fundamentals or about automation.)
Still, Manxx has made several points that sound completely logical and right, to me, and I decided to post just to say so, generally. And in particular, I see that both time and money can be spent only once and that each has an opportunity-cost.
I do think that in some ways, wanting to spend more - rather than less - time with your daughter makes independent trading quite an attractive, longer-term, home-based option. But again, that’s thinking more about the [I]outcome[/I] than the [I]process[/I]. I’m referring here to the fact that, as some people say (and with quite some justification, I think) that trading successfully is actually easy: it’s just [I]learning how to do it[/I] that’s enormously time-consuming and difficult, and is achieved by only such a small proportion of its aspirants. :33:
I have one further observation, though I can’t assess its potential relevance: I think that for someone who wants to treat learning to trade safely/successfully as an “interesting hobby”, lack of realistic capital really doesn’t have to be a drawback at all, for two main reasons: first, it’s possible to do the whole thing on demo at negligible/no cost; secondly, given a successful demo track-record (which has to be a reasonably rigorous one, even if not a long one at all), limited but significant funding is actually fairly easily available, for example through TST.
Other than these comments, for what they’re worth (if anything), I’m no help to you at all, I’m afraid. :8: