[ajhunter]

Hi folks --

Very interesting thread. Just a quick note about how I've made the leap and a few things I've done that may be different / useful...

I didn't start out part time, took the full time plunge about a year and a half ago. Made the typical early mistakes for about six months -- trading way too many shares, no real strategies, lots of impulse trades, etc.

One little trick that helped me early on when I was wildly overtrading... I decided I'd only give myself three trades a day, and when I was done with those three, that was it, I was done for the day. I actually wrote out little paper trade "slips" that I would cross off and hand over to my wife (who also works from home) to help keep me accountable. That really helped me stay focused on looking for high probability setups, because it felt terrible to have wasted three trades early on junky impulse trades, only to force myself to sit on my hands and watch better set ups go by later in the day without being able to trade them!

As I went along, I noticed that I traded better when I just focused on getting to know one or two stocks day after day, coming to really understand their character and how they move. I actually selected those one or two based on their daily range, as I didn't want something that moved so much it would churn me up in the process. I started out with a stock with a really small range (40 cents a day!), just trading 100-200 shares, and then when that got too boring to bear, I moved to a stock with a range of around 80 cents a day. My goal at the time was to capture about 1/3rd of that range. Again, small potatoes money wise, but my goal wasn't to make lots of money, but to learn how to be consistent, knowing I could increase the shares later.

Now, as I am more consistently profitable, Im something of a trading oddity, as I still only basically follow three retail stocks, and I have a goal of making just 3 or 4 trades a day. Someday I'll switch over to the YM, but I don't think I'm ready quite yet.

Even though I didn't have much of a background in this, I always knew I had the aptitude, in the sense that I'm a very disciplined and patient person. What's amazing is that even though I am disciplined and patient at times to the point of robotic, still, there are many times when I haven't been disciplined and patient *enough* for the market!

I have been much more consistent and profitable for the past six months or so, so I agree with those earlier in this thread who have talked about a minimum 12 to 24 month timeline. Its been a huge help that we have plenty of savings, my wife works to cover the bulk of our expenses, etc. I agree with Soultrader that trading with a very small account (or with essentially all of one's savings) would be a huge psychological burden.

Right now, the hardest thing for me is a strange little psychology issue. Prior to this I was a graduate student for many years, essentially making / living on $50 a day. Now that I am getting to be more successful, it feels strange to be actually making something like a "normal" (really quite low for most "normal" people, in fact) wage. An interesting thing I experienced earlier, was I had this psychological threshold -- I would be up a few thousand dollars, and then hit some glass ceiling in my head, and promptly lose it all if not more. This happened three or four times. Finally, I started taking my profits out of my account every week, so that psychologically I would start each week fresh, rather than at this glass ceiling, and strangely that has helped quite a bit -- the ceiling isn't an issue any more, because my mind no longer knows where it is!

Also, one other thing that my wife said that helped take some pressure off. She reminded me that if I was looking to learn any other profession that would ultimately pay me well -- become a doctor, or a lawyer, for example -- that is something people study for three to ten years, and they PAY 50,000 to 200,000 dollars to learn those skills. That was a big help, in remembering that basically trading losses in your first several years are literally the cost of your education -- the key is to try to get your education as cheaply as possible!

Hope some of this helps -- man, its been quite a ride, and I know I'm still have so far to go -- I feel like I'm a second grade trader (which is an improvement from Pre-K, but a long way from senior year!)

Andrew