Trading for a living

Today is my 6th work anniversary at my current company. I have been at a job for more than 18 years - solidly at the mid point of a typical 40 year work life.

At some point in a person's life, you might start to wonder if you are becoming redundant to organizations in terms of being a desirable worker. At the beginning of ones work life - after graduation, the prospects seems boundless - there seems to be lots of jobs and lots of opportunities. At my current stage of work life - the reverse seems apparent. You would never consider lower level jobs any more - they pay worse and the higer level positions seem impossible to do.

At such a stage in one's life, you might start to contemplate having a career change - be your own boss maybe and some might consider trading for a living.

What is trading for a living - my simple definition is being able to trade (on the stock market, bonds, commodities etc) to sustain your current expenses at a minimum and prefereably to return a profit - to allow you to save up for a rainy day.

So is it possible to trade for a living? Well if you have never traded stocks before or have made big losses in the past, it is probably a bad idea. If you have traded part time and made a decent profit i.e. never made a loss, it would probably sound to you like a great idea.

Trading <> investing in my book. Investing means putting in the cash into an investment e.g. house, stocks, bonds to achieve returns however with a long term outlook and without constant monitoring of the investment (maybe an hour or two a week?). Trading means having to switch on your computer in the morning/night and monitoring your current positions constantly and looking for new positions to get into. Day trading would require one to track positions in a day and ideally close off those positions at the end of the day to reduce exposure. I dont trade however my impression of it is that assuming that I have 200 dollars of expenses a day, I will have to trade to achieve an average of 200 dollars of returns a day over time - this would mean that I have to trade x amount of single stock   to get a % return e.g. trade $10000 and get a 2% return or the equivalent (less trading expenses) in many smaller trades. 2% seems achievable - in a single day a stock can fluctuate by 2% several times - however it is probably harder than it seems.

To me, a part time job or a job that allows one to have a lot of free time (with lesser pay) is a better option. You can use that free time to research for investment opportunities ie. stocks to invest in. An alternative is to buy a property and rent it out for at least $4400k a month (after deducting property expenses and taxes).