Basically the question boils down to: more money for more of your time and energy or less money but more time for you to do whatever you want?
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I would pick the less money and more time to do whatever I wanted. I do not want to be stuck to the charts all day if I can avoid it.
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To me the answer is always the first one because this is the main reason why people start trading in the first place I would say. As you progressing you will find passion in trading and feeling a bit of sadness when weekend is coming knowing that you won’t be able to trade during that time. Hahaha.
I don’t think you would need to trade for lower returns because you can just invest in index such as S&P 500 or if you have a bit more money, you can consider Berkshire Hathaway. Don’t have to bother trading at all since you have no passion in it. You will save time and money this way.
But, after all, it’s all up to the individual perception. To me, trading requires passion, hard work, dedication, perseverance & sacrifices. And even if you have all of these elements inside you, success still doesn’t guaranteed because we will fail in trading by default. These elements would only give the slightest chance for us to succeed.
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If my trades needed constant monitoring, surely that would mean I was constantly thinking I might have made the wrong decision to take that position. But I didn’t know for sure. That’s not a good place to start from.
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All profitable strategies requires little time.
Constant monitoring system will never make profits in the long run.
Less is more in trading.
This is the major difference between trading and working.
Do trade, do not work in the market.
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Would you rather have a very profitable trading strategy that requires constant monitoring or one with lower returns but won’t require that much time commitment?
For me I would prefer the profitable strategy as that is the reason I am involved in Forex in the first place. If achieving the goal involves more work then so be it.
Having said that though it never ceases to amaze me how difficult it is for a lot of people to answer a simple question. Dont take my word for it, read the responses and judge for yourselves.
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Yup. I think the question can be applied to anything: how much of your time are you willing to sacrifice to get what you want. I don’t think we’re all trading just for fun.
Yup. The question is always “how much do you really want it?”
I would go after lower returns with more time to do the things I want. I wouldn’t be glued to my charts while the world rolls by. More money cannot make up for lost time. It is normal to think money can replace time, but the reality is time is priceless.
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But what if you’re required to put in hours upon hours for maybe 3-5 years and then you can do whatever you want after now that you have the money?
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That works for me (although I would draw a line in what constitutes hours upon hours). One must pay their dues of time spent to understand a concept fully.
The thread caption assumes, by default, that the trader is profitable and has paid his/her dues of much time spent studying, and has attained mastery of trading. Moreso, the only issue the trader struggles with is either to devote more of their time to trading with a strategy requiring constant monitoring and earn much money, or they earn lower returns with a strategy that doesn’t require much time commitment.
This question is easily answered when a person categorises what is more important in his/her life. It will be different for each person and so is the answer to this question.
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This! I definitely go for trading less. I want to increase my profits by increasing the size of my trade, not by trading more time (always sticking to risk management rules of course, size can be bigger when your capital gets bigger, one must be careful). I had an epiphany when I read of someone suggesting taking only one trade a day to escape the risk of overtrading, I found it soooo useful cause I realized the enormous amount of free time this could give me, so I decided to apply it forever and my trading plan lays exactly on this.
I know this works well for me, I’m not saying that anyone should do this and I deeply respect any trading style. Anyway, to me this is perfection.
This makes sense and really makes it a sustainable/scalable venture.
You only still take one trade a day? What if you still have an open one from the previous day?
Sorry, my fault: I didn’t tell that I day trade and so I never keep a position overnight.
Oh okay, that makes more snese now.
The ideal thing to do is to have a trading strategy that is able to grow your capital rapidly.
Along the way, divest a portion of the profits into instruments that generate passive income/returns; and by that, I meant truly passive income such as bonds or properties for rental.
The ultimate goal is to achieve financial freedom and live a life, not to keep chasing money.
YUP. That really is the ultimate goal.