Top 11 Reasons: Why Full-Time Trading is Challenging!
No Fixed Monthly Income: It is not like a regular job which pays or guarantees you a fixed monthly income. If you lose your job you can find another, but if you lose your capital, you have nothing, your trading career will be over!
Drawdowns: Forget income, you may have drawdowns. Can you cope up with that? You won’t be 100% correct and markets are not linear, there are sideways days, ups and downs! Few days or even months can be really frustrating! Trading is full of uncertainties!
No Paid Holidays: You won’t get paid on holidays, and there are no paid leaves unlike your regular job!
Pressure & Stress: If you only depend on trading for an income then it may put extra pressure and stress on you to generate money, there by, it demands you to protect your capital, be extremely disciplined, have patience, be consistent, physically and psychologically strong. Are you up for it?
Capital Protection: Unlike many standard jobs you first need to protect your capital to be in the business. Once you blowup your account, it becomes even more difficult to comeback, as you may be pushing even more to recover your lost capital. Therefore, the chances of making mistakes are more.
Psychology: If you are psychologically vulnerable, you are bound to make mistakes like revenge trading, not adhering to your stop loss, over trading, taking random trades, not following risk reward, trading aggressively and not following your rules. Can you control your greed, fear, hope, frustration, anger?
Health: It becomes difficult if you’re not healthy, not only psychologically but physically! If you get a headache you take rest on a regular job, and mostly the work won’t change but in trading every second the price moves! Yes, on the contrary you do have opportunities every second as well!
Lonely Business: Trading can be a lonely business! You don’t get to interact with people on a daily basis, unlike a regular day at an office. Of course unless you provide some services or have a decent following on social media. 😉
Taxes, Charges & Expenditure: You have to pay taxes on a trade basis, brokerages and other charges which many conveniently overlook, also don’t forget short term and long term capital gains taxes.
You even need to pay taxes on loosing trades! 🙁
Hard work: Trading is not easy as many may have assumed. You would’ve already understood that by now. As a trader, you also need to put in effort every day on preparing for the next possible opportunity. Not only a trader has to be attentive during the market hours but also has to put in efforts after the market hours. Be it studying charts, studying fundamentals of a company, improving your psychology, following stock market related news and updates or other aspects, you need to keep working hard. Are you ready for the grind?
