Trading While Working Full Time!?

Hi,


This is my first post!

Over the past couple of years I have been researching, reading and paper trading various strategies and theories. My back ground is in I.T and I work in Banking...but I do have a genuine interest in the markets.

I wanted to get peoples views on "Is it possible to trade, while working full time..??" my past expereince tells me its all about the time frame I choose to trade, but im always too concious about suddent market movements and gaps.. so i feel i have to monitor the ticker 24/7 - this is the main reason why I am delaying to trade proper, its not that I dont have confidence in my ability or strategy its just that I dont seem to have the time I want to give to my trading...

If you trade while working fulltime I would really like to hear from you.



Thanks

I've been trading US stocks intra day for a living - full time since 1999.
I started off trading evenings only as the US market is open till 9pm UK time
Richard

I trade and have a demanding full time job too. I get up at 5am and get home at 7pm!

I set up most of my trades at the week end using Limit Orders. That way I can buy at the price I feel gives value and sell after I have made the gain I want.
I am going away tomorrow and have set up Stop loss limts today to protect my gauins and Buy Limit Orders to but them back at a lower level. locking in gains.

However, it is a good idea to check the prices (even with a 15min delay) so you know what is going on say every tow hours (what I do) Then if things get hairy or an opportuinity arises you can trade.

It is also difficult to know 100% that your computer is secure if you are on an office network etc. I am not in IT but know that a company can see what you do on the net and can perhaps get passwords etc and these may be left on your computer too. It is also a good idea to transfer funds to your trading account using your own home computer.


It all depends what your day job is I suppose.

trade Daily charts on Fx. place your orders based on UK close and just check in the evenings.

trading is like making love with your wife. 20 million tadpols are released and only a couple thousand arrive at the finnish line. the rest are dead.

just keep in mind that you require market experience to work out all the bumps and if your going to plan to look at the market once a day for a short time you just effectively just doubled or trippled your grooming period to become consistent.

you need to face the following facts:

1) it takes time to learn to trade and that unfortunately means screen time. it also doesnt mean the more you put in the more you get out. there is a balance required just like work. i would say on average it would take 4 hours a day for 1-3 years.

2) if you dont have a method of trading you need to work this out and once again that takes time and lots of it. if your trading larger time frames you will probably only end up with 1 maybe 2 trades a week. in order to verify a method you need at least 25-30 trade sample sizes so that means on average 12-13 weeks per sample. It can take many samples to get a working method!!

3) if you have plans to quit your job in 6 months and trade full time when only looking at the charts an hour or so a day then your fooling yourself.

Trading is like a time bomb... The more hours you clock in, the bigger the explosion at the end.
And the bigger the explosion - the better the result for the terrorist.

Now for my analysis -
'Hours you clock in' refers to the time you put into trading.
'Explosion' therefore refers to the rewards you recieve, a terrorist gets lots of death through making a better time bomb - You get more money from spending more time trading.

I hope this helps :S

forker said:

trading is like making love with your wife.

Click to expand...

What? Boring, unsuccesful, slow and full of fallen expectations.

Wow! Making love to my wife isn't like trading at all, its alot funner, unlucky though buddy.

HaloTrader said:

What? Boring, unsuccesful, slow and full of fallen expectations.

Wow! Making love to my wife isn't like trading at all, its alot funner, unlucky though buddy.

Click to expand...

What you mean losing every arguement, never being forgiven, being wrong when youre right, losing your cash. yet still you want more! Lol

Thanks all for your reply's, I recently noticed that fx seems to be a good option as its 24/7 market, and from the charts you can see it trades within a range - ill look into this.

Also my trading account is with cmc, and they provide out of hours trading on FTSE100 (out of hours price based on US commodies & indicies, as so im told) the spreads are extremily tight so ill try out my strategy on this too.

Thanks Again.

Pound foolish said:

What you mean losing every arguement, never being forgiven, being wrong when youre right, losing your cash. yet still you want more! Lol

Click to expand...

.... I don't have a wife. Giggity.

shallan said:

Thanks all for your reply's, I recently noticed that fx seems to be a good option as its 24/7 market, and from the charts you can see it trades within a range - ill look into this.

Also my trading account is with cmc, and they provide out of hours trading on FTSE100 (out of hours price based on US commodies & indicies, as so im told) the spreads are extremily tight so ill try out my strategy on this too.

Thanks Again.

Click to expand...

Read this to the 'Petter Pan tune'

'Don't do that, Don't do that, Don't do that, Don't do that, Don't doooo that'

HaloTrader said:

What? Boring, unsuccesful, slow and full of fallen expectations.

Wow! Making love to my wife isn't like trading at all, its alot funner, unlucky though buddy.

Click to expand...

firstly you didnt get the point, secondly funner isnt a word, and lastly im not your buddy

Trading daily charts only - getting good at one type of particular trade, before moving on to learn more - using trailing stops and limits and adjusting these if needed by logging on every few hours in the working day. Orders to open could be used for some trades I guess, but I am a not so keen on using them. - IG do charts and trading on iphone, may be useful at work (not tried this yet though) - These have helped me.
Kind Regards
Jason