trading & poker

[Sniper]

Salary: You should move to the US, even an entry level IT consultant doing tech support work makes more than double your annual salary!

Poker: 50 hours of 4 tabling, every week, is not as easy as it sounds... based on your other posts, it sounds like you could use some more experience here... additionally, in my opinion, you shouldn't consider yourself a poker pro, until you can show consistant profit at the 5/10 level or above.

Trading: If you intend to have any kind of life outside of "work", your not going to have much time to devote to stock research, after playing 50 hours of poker every week... also, while your short term results may look good, have you established any kind of a trading plan that would allow you to continue to maintain that type of performance over the long haul?

Remember, both in poker and trading there is a time requirement beyond just the actual playing of poker and the trading... to be truly successful, you will also need to do research and post play analysis in both cases.

I highly recommend you pick up a few "Starting a Business" and "Working from Home" books, and give serious thought to the "Do you have what it takes?" chapters. You might also find the "Quiting your day job/Going Pro" Threads in the 2+2 forums (The mag forum has had a few, so you can start there), interesting reading.

Finally, it is important that you not only be appropriately bankrolled for your poker and trading careers, but that you also have your expenses covered for at least 1 year, while you go through the growing pains of the transition. Unlike a regular paycheck, in both poker and trading it is possible to have a losing month... and you can't start out on weak financial footing, or one bad month could put you out of business, or worse!

Thx so much for your advice.

1. You're talking about the cities, right? I will seriously consider your suggestion.

2. I don't have a trading plan really. At the moment I'm gathering experience and study books etc. My next step is to gather a significant trading stake.

3. I'm currently out of work & so I will probably give it a shot anyway the next months. Do I really need a thing like a "poker-business plan"? What would it contain?

My plan up to now is to
a) work really hard on my game (analysing hands, taking notes, reading articles & books)
b) play regular hours and leave enough free time for recreation etc

what were you trading?

[tek]

Work during the day. Check your stocks while working. Play poker at night.

[Degen]

Applying my poker knowledge to trading (and i know very little about trading) I'd say your approach to trading, and high opinion of your abilities after your run of good luck (results) makes you sound like a fish.

I'd suggest reading Fooled By Randomness and some other books that aren't so keen to the idea of GET RICH IN STOCKS!!! so you aren't hit in the face with a brick at some point (or at least you can reduce the liklihood of this happening).

Thx for the link, I will read the book. How much time do you consider to be a minimum for judging skills? My data for the stock market is ~20 months where I did better than my benchmark (SX5E) and 90% of the mutual funds in the same market.

[DesertCat]

Why don't you post one of your successful "trades" along with the analysis you used to make your purchase and sell decisions? Just like posting hand histories, this might provide you with more serious feedback on your trading/investing abilities.

[Goodnews]

first, get a job, even if its part time. at least if you ever decide to go to a more formal interview, there wont be a huge gap of unemployment to be questioned.

second, you mentioned playing on regular hours, this is proven to be not your maximized +EV, you play only when you have an edge, whether that means for 3 minutes, or for 3 days.

i tried to go pro during my summer (i am an 18 yr old engineering student) for a month, i made some good money but i burned out and it was a very valuable learning experience. hopefully you will understand that what you say sounds romantic and give you freedom, but it is in fact a different kind of ball and chain.