Lets continue with the statistics project, this will help all of us to get to know each other and see what we’re like! Please don’t forget to vote in the trading strategy poll here 301 Moved Permanently
Surprisingly, I voted “to make a little income on the side”. Because really, once I get enough money in the account to withdraw a few hundreds every months, compounding will stop there.
I was a cross between “I want to be a trading superstar and compound my way to millions” and “I want to trade full time for a living and eat what I kill”
Im still quite new to forex trading but love if i could become a full time trader
I want to trade for a living, but as with any job, I want to be as successful in that role as I can be. Success, job satisfaction, forfillment, in this line of work means making considerable cash which isnt always the case in many other lines of work. If I am passionate about my career, I will be successful (and rich). I hope.
My goal: stay profitable.
I also bordered on “superstar” and “trading full time”. In the end, trading full time is the reason I decided I wanted to do this, so that is why I made that decision. It would be great to make a lot of money, but the FIRST goal for me is to have the independence that trading offers.
Same here!
Looks like so far, a majority is targeting the full time trader category! I think its definitely the most awesome property of trading: full and complete independence like no other form of employment can offer.
This is what appeals to me about trading full time. Also the fact that the market and opportunities are always there, no matter what happens to the economy. I also dream of havng a business with the earning potential of trading, never having dry periods with no work, no clients, no emails to answer, no phone calls. And full time being about 15 minutes a day 
Yeah, I guess once you become really good you sort of know your setups when you see them, you just take them and then your work is done. I dream of the day when I can put on my longer term trades at night or in the morning, then scalp the morning S&P’s, then get into a car and head off to the beach, then later on open up my laptop at a beachside cafe and manage my longer positions, maybe grab a scalp here or there. That’s the life, isn’t it? 
Its truly a fantastic job, and it doesn’t give you the baggage of having to deal with unpleasant people at work day in and day out (especially a crummy boss if you’re unlucky enough to have one). Its sort of an embodiment of the philosophy that Dominguez writes about in “Your Money or Your Life”, it permits you to truly enjoy a quality of life. This was impossible years ago, when the only way you could do this is to have an office with a quotron and be on the phone with your broker all day long.
Before I discovered trading I was (and still am) doing internet marketing with the dream of getting to a stage of making a nice passive income but it’s incredibly hard work and takes a lot of trial and error.
Even then you’d end up with a business that involves maintaining lots of websites, managing subscriber lists, constant tweaking, dealing with customers (if you create and sell info products) or at least managing outsourcers to run all that for you. And you have to stay on top of the competition, stay in the search engines, be on twitter/facebook a lot - it’s work it really is.
Trading seems so much cleaner than all that and the feedback loop that tells you whether you’re doing it right or wrong is instant unlike IM which can take months of hard work and expense just to start getitng traffic to a website that may or may not pay off.
I like the idea of a large trading account and a handful of well chosen trades a month that generate 2%/week or 10% a month. each morning you fire up your charts, if there are no trades there are no trades - and most days there won’t be.
Ironically now I have an internet marketing consulting business that I’m building up so I can one day make a lot of money from and sell to fund…
… a large trading account 
I’m also looking into online marketing in the FX trading niche but it’s so saturated and competitive and also there are very few affiliate products I’d recommend. Plenty of crap/get rich quick/paid systems/robots etc but I’m not interested in promoting bad products to people. Even if the target customer is only looking for get rich quick/easy money instead of actually learning a skill that takes a couple of years.
If it looks doable and will help me build an account quicker then we’ll see…
The FX niche is fairly small and definitely over-saturated. If you don’t want to sell systems, signals, and education, you have to find something else like t-shirts or coffee mugs. I don’t know how much income you get from banner ads, unless you really drove a lot of traffic to it. Personally I think this site is actually the best trading site I’ve ever come across. They really worked hard on it and I hope its paying off for them. They don’t shove products down your throat, they just go off the banners. The idea of having a free system (Cowabunga) must have gotten a lot of good traffic on its own.
Its a tough situation, how to build your stake and work at the same time. Personally I’ve decided to take the b-school route and see if I can trade at a bank or prop firm. I’m still young enough to have a chance, so I’m going to use that chance while I have it.
I’d love to go the “indie” route, do some small business while trading or work some job where I can trade part time (whatever that might be). In the end you have to basically do whatever is the best use of your time and energy, what will get you to your goals faster and more efficiently.
I like to eat what I kill.
I don’t think I’ll do it - the whole idea of list building/marketing etc turns me completely off and is most probably why I looked for something else and found trading instead.
I have a blog so if it get’s some decent traffic (and I’m not going all out to generate it) I’ll maybe slap some adsense up there maybe some links to good educational products.
I think all the major brokers have good affiliate programs as well.
Building up the consulting business then selling it to fund a large account seems to make the most sense at this stage.
Hahahah, good point. Seriously, do you know of any other profession where you don’t have either a 1) boss-employee or 2) client-business owner relationship?Self employment still means you answer to customers that have specifications and demands. Even selling on ebay is all about making customers happy, though you never see them you work hard to get good feedback and even then, statistically speaking you’ll always encounter someone whom you can never please and is going to cause you headaches, maybe even threaten to sue.
The tradeoff to trading as with many other startups is that you need an alternate source of cash flow as you are getting started and building self confidence, as well as your trading stake. Then if you live in the US of A there’s the dirty question of medical insurance, which can be quite a serious consideration.
The people who have it best are those who live with somebody (i.e. parents, spouse), or who have a paid off mortgage, and have a family business where they can control their time commitments. That’s ideal if you have that.
I would love to trade my way to millions and who knows with enough discipline I might be able to but really I want to just make a decent living off trading. I’m a full time trader now but I’m not making a killing in the markets.
Not gonna lie, I still have the big dream of compounding my account to millions.
But, I didn’t start with that as my goal.
When I first started my only goal was to become a skilled trader. That is, profficient, self disciplined and consistently profitable. By my logic if I could get to that goal making money would work it’self out.
The next goal I set was to be able to make enough trading that if I had to I could live off of my profit. Check on that one.
Luckily I already had a small home business that pays the bills, so I don’t have to live off of my trading account and can keep compounding it and dreaming.
P.S. Funny my business is internet based as well as the poster above me. I see the same problem with it. It’s worse now though. When I started years back there were niches to be had all over the place and little competition for many of them. Now every asshat in the world has a blog spamming fake reviews of crap e-products. I used to be able to get 400 very targeted clicks a day on google for $40 dollars or under. I had to ditch google, with all the fake review spammers it got to the point where I’d be lucky if I could get a click for one dollar.
Yeah, that really seems to be a big theme with a lot of people - having a small business that lets you control your time commitments. That definitely helps keep the pressure off. Its a bit harder if you work full time and you want to trade, its a delicate matter checking the market while you’re on the job, being concerned with the security of your account, and the touchy issue of using the corporate computer to make money, etc.
Once I graduate from school I’m going to be faced with that difficult issue. Unfortunately I can’t afford the cash flow negative start up phase for a new business so I have to hit the pavement and go with a W-2 situation for a while. The one good thing is the medical insurance is way better if you’re an employee.
Btw, love that word ‘asshat’