How to Become a Full-Time Trader? (A Quick Guide)

The ultimate goal of every new trader is to become a full-time trader. Being a full-time trader brings a lot of advantages to one’s life, such as financial freedom and being our boss. But there are a lot of factors to be considered before making any drastic career change decisions. You should have a thorough understanding of the financial, social, and physical requirements that are needed to beat the market regularly and hence to make a stable and good income via trading.

Trading is not as easy as some online instructors and influencers portray it to be. You should have patience, and experience and has to contribute a whole lot of screen time to build a career as a trader. But once you master the techniques, this line of job will be very rewarding. So here are some fundamental concepts you have to understand before thinking of how to become a full-time trader.

A Career as a Trader

Traders do play an important role in the present-day economy.

History of Trading

Trading as a career can be said to be as old as the first financial markets. Government securities trading was first done by bankers in Verona and Florence as early as the fourteenth century. There were 24 supply brokers on Wall Street when it first opened in 1792. Since the dawn of humankind, people have generally traded goods and services, such as food, gold, and commodities. The world as we know it today would not exist without traders. Indeed, one may argue that the explosive economic growth of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries was the result of dropping trade barriers between countries, globalization, and unrestricted capital flows.

But in this article, we will refer to a trading career as being a full-time trader. A full-time trader takes advantage of short-term price movements in popular asset classes. These asset classes are:

• Stocks
• Bonds
• Currencies
• Commodities
• Cryptocurrencies
• Precious metals
• Derivative contracts

Popularity of Trading

We can say that trading is the hardest way to make easy money. Yet so many new people are attracted to this career nowadays. Many people around the globe are active traders. Some might do this as a secondary source of income. But many work as full-time traders and make a fortune in the market. So let us take a look into the changes that happened in recent years that led to the increase in the popularity of trading as a career option among common people. The growth in technology in recent times is a major factor that increased the accessibility of trading. In old times, trading was monopolized by powerful people and companies. But today, anyone can open a trading account in a few minutes. Online trading i.e., retail trading is undergoing major growth and will continue to do so in the coming years.

Long-Term and Short-Term Trading

As more and more people come to the field of trading, a major number of these newbies wish to make trading their career i.e., to become a full-time trader. You can also trade longer-term price fluctuations using swing trading or position trading tactics, depending on your preferred style of trading. But it’s crucial to understand that a career in trading isn’t synonymous with making long-term buy-and-hold investments. Instead, full-time traders seek to profit from more volatile and shorter-term movements. They then quickly search for further compelling trading opportunities in various asset classes.

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What Does It Take to Become a Professional Trader?

It is quite easy to become a full-time trader. But it is not so easy to make consistent profits as a trader. Trading, like any other job, requires knowledge, dedication and experience. But what makes it different from all other jobs is that the practical side of trading cannot be taught. You should be prepared to do a lot of work by yourself such as observing and analyzing charts and markets for months, acquiring a decent amount of knowledge on market fundamentals, learning about price-action and reading up on risk management. All of these have to be attained before even thinking of becoming a full-time trader. You can take the help of an online stock / share trading course to learn the fundamentals. The practical knowledge you gain from your own experiences and observations has to be built on the foundation of the knowledge you gained from the online trading course.

Time Taken to become a Trader

It will take around two years of time for a retail trader to gain consistent profits from the market. This much time must be more than enough to learn the basics, get acquainted with trading practices, achieve sufficient screen time, get experience and develop the intuition to approximate the price movements across various asset classes. This is also the period where you have to experiment with various trading styles and strategies and find the one that best suits you.

The learning curve depends on the individual. Some will start earning profits in months. Some will take years. Many people will realize they are not cut out for the profession of trading and leave the field. Certain psychological characteristics make people more suitable for the profession of trading. Emotional control, dedication, discipline and patience are some of the psychological traits that are very important to succeed as a trader.

Things to Know before Trading

There are plenty of trading opportunities in the market. You need to know the following things to be successful in trading.

• when to enter into a trade
• when to exit the trade
• when to lock in profits
• when to cut losses

All of these can be done at the right time only if you know how to read the market.

Trading for Yourself vs Proprietary Trading

There are a variety of options when it comes to the case of full-time trading. Let’s look into them.

Working for a Forex Prop Company

When you work with a Forex prop company, you are partnering with a company that funds traders so they can trade using the capital of the company. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of this option.

Investing in Your Own

When becoming a full-time trader, you can also invest your capital by yourself. This is the best option for you if you need complete independence and control in your trade. There are pros and cons for this option as well. Some of them, are listed below.

Choosing a Trading Job

Another route to full-time trading is to look for work as a trader with a reputable trading company. Unlike prop trading professions, which are mostly analysis-focused, these jobs are primarily execution-focused. This method too has its own pros and cons.

A Day in the Life of a Full-Time Day Trader

You may wonder what the daily schedule of a full-time trader would look like. Let us take a look at it.

Morning Preparation

this might include checking the daily headlines, examining the daily economic calendar to know if there are any important reports scheduled for that day, and taking a look at the previous sessions across time zones (if you trade around-the-clock markets like FX) and checking the important stock indices. These preparations will give you an idea of what the market is like for that day and the overall risks involved. Checking the news headlines and reading about upcoming economic reports will help you to consider things that you may find interesting. It will also help you mark the major support and resistance levels and the appropriate trade strategy for that day.

Trading

After the morning preparation, when the market opens a trader is fully ready to make a trade if the rules of their trading strategies are met. Then they stay focused on various charts and set up alerts for when prices are above or below certain technical levels to get information about upcoming trade opportunities. Some may end the trading by afternoon depending on the opportunities they get or may wait for other markets to open to catch a few more trades.

Daily review

A full-time Trader should always end his workday with a review. Many traders neglect this important part. Here, the trader goes through all the trades they did that day. They then look for the levels they could have added to their position, then look for increased risks, then analyze some trading mistakes you might have made and avoid them in future, then calculate the profits and losses and win rates of the day. It is important to understand that daily review is necessary to improve your trade performance.

Pros of Trading Full-Time from Home

There are certain pros to becoming a full-time trader working from home. They are:

Being Your Own Boss

You establish your own rules as a full-time, independent trader. You choose the markets, trading hours, trading tactics, and other details. The freedom that full-time independent traders enjoy is typically not available to traders in proprietary trading businesses. Nonetheless, some traders discover that trading alone, without a supervisor controlling their risk level and trading method, is more challenging. To be an independent trader, you must possess the patience and self-control to stick to your trading strategy.

Risk Level Management

While full-time employees of corporations must adhere to their employers’ risk policies, independent traders are free to choose the risk levels they choose to trade at. However, it may be countered that this benefit of being an independent trader has a drawback in that excessive risk can result in considerably larger losses. Because of this, learning responsible risk management is a must before working as an independent trader full-time.

Adhering to a pre-specified risk-per-deal, or the overall risk associated with each trade, is a prudent strategy for risk management. Generally speaking, unless you’ve found an A++ setup, don’t risk more than 2% of your trading account on a single trade. To maximize your returns in the market, you might want to take on more risk with those high-probability setups. But keep in mind that not every setup is a high-probability setup, and knowing which ones are requires expertise and understanding of the industry. Establish a maximum risk for the trading day as well. Make sure the guidelines you find most effective are included in your trading plan.

Choosing Your Own Strategy

You can use whatever trading technique you like as an independent trader. You are free to choose how you wish to trade. It could be any of the following options or any combination of these strategies.

• trend-following
• breakout
• mean-reverting
• short-term momentum

However, a lot of prop trading companies favor particular trading approaches and methods.

Working Hours

Working as an independent trader has no set hours. You might want to be in front of your trading screen during certain market hours, though, as they still provide better trading chances than others. When trading equities, for example, days when earnings are reported and the first few minutes after the market opens can have big price changes. If you are a forex trader, the New York – London overlap, which runs from 13:30 to 15:30 GMT, frequently offers excellent trading opportunities in addition to significant market reports.

You are typically in front of your trading desk from the opening of the market until it closes when you trade at a prop firm. Even though there may be more trading chances as a result, you might also be wasting time that could be better spent learning how to trade, for example. As an independent trader, you select the methods you want to use and trade during market hours that maximize your strategy’s profitability.

Cons of Trading Full-Time from Home

Like any other job, full-time trading does have its downsides. Some of them are discussed below.

Lack of Information

Compared to traders at prop firms, you can face specific information and technical limitations as a full-time retail trader. The majority of retail traders lack the capital to invest in cutting-edge trading technologies, such as customized trading platforms, or they cannot afford pricey real-time news feeds, like Bloomberg, for example. You are limited to expanding your account gradually until you become a retail trader and can afford those items. That’s about all you can do about this.

Poor Social Life

The standard of your social life is another drawback of trading from home. There are no co-workers nearby to strike up a conversation. Thankfully, since you choose your trading hours, you might have more free time to interact with others outside of your home. Finding the ideal balance between trade and personal life is crucial in this situation: If you trade too much, it will negatively impact your social life; if you trade too little, you won’t be a profitable trader.

How Much Money Is Needed to Become a Professional Trader?

When you decide to become a professional full-time trader, that means that your only source of income is trading. This puts a lot of pressure to attain consistent profits, and this might lead to making trading mistakes. Even in a month where you have more losses, you will have to pay for your daily expenses. If you have a family to take care of, then it will be much more difficult. This is why it is essential to be sure that you can be a successful trader before opting to become a full-time trader.

For this, first, you have to learn the breakdown of the trading costs. Then you have to start with a small account and gradually grow it. After that, you should check your trading performance and get a picture of your average monthly performance. You also have to ensure that your account is growing even after you withdraw some funds. It takes time to succeed at trading. And your long-term goal is to grow your trading account. You may figure out how much money you need to meet your daily costs by looking at your trading journal and track record.

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Things to Know before becoming a Full-Time Trader

Many may find trading an interesting way to make more income. However, only seasoned traders know the practical and real side of this profession. So, when making a decision to become a full-time trader please make note of the following suggestions.

Sufficient Experience

The right amount of experience is essential for any field. But its importance is on a different level in a risky profession such as trading. The markets are very dynamic and always undergoing fluctuation and to tackle these changes appropriately you need to have some experience. Be it with commodities or equities, you have to have experience to succeed in trading. The concepts of trading may be easy for you to understand. But when the market is volatile and unpredictable it is the practical knowledge earned through years that comes to your help.

Ready to Face Challenges

Everything might not go as we planned. So be prepared to face the dark face of the trading career too. Losses are a certainty in this profession. But you have to learn to move forward both fiscally and psychologically when things go badly. On some days the opening of the market itself comes with huge profits for you. But on other days you will have to leave with nothing even after a full day of hard work.

This happens even if you’re a smart trader who understands the markets and takes positions based on a winning technique. The main characteristics of markets are their randomness and volatility. It has the ability to change course at any time. The sooner you grasp this element and develop coping mechanisms for disappointments and unmet expectations, the sooner you’ll be prepared to trade full-time.

Skills in Risk Management

Risk and profit are correlated in trading. However, the risk must be proportionate to your risk tolerance. Imagine the worst-case scenario for the market. How do we react when our trades fail? How can we get back on track after a losing streak? For this reason, having a fully functional risk management plan is essential when trading. Although there won’t be a 100% return on every trade, we can still turn a profit even during losing streaks if we manage our risks well. The following are some essential components of risk management on which you should concentrate:

• The amount of risk you must accept on each trade
• The level of risk for your stop-loss orders
• When where and how to exit trades
• Your trade’s maximum size and whether or not to expand it
• A backup strategy in case you go through a prolonged losing streak

Income for Livelihood

This is the most important question a trader needs to answer themselves. Every expense of your daily life has to be met with the money you make from trading. This will put a lot of pressure on a trader. It will even affect their psychology and in turn their performance. The only way out of this is to plan your finances. A trader will have winning days where they receive unbelievably high profits. They will also have days when all their expectations are shattered. So, a part of the profits from good days has to be saved up for your spending on bad days. Compound Interest is a powerful tool that can help your funds grow. When you invest a portion of your revenues in fixed-return vehicles, you will be able to better manage your financial obligations.

Start with Success in Part-time Trading

How consistent were you when trading part-time? Did you benefit from the majority of your trades? Did you maintain discipline as a part-time trader? If all the answers to the above questions were not positive, then chances are that you are not yet ready to step into the role of a full-time trader. Before you begin full-time trading, you must determine whether you can produce consistent results, whether you can be disciplined, and so on. Give yourself a time frame and trade part-time until you see results. If you can be a successful part-time trader, you can advance to full-time trading.

The Account Size

The transition to full-time trading can be done only if your account is large enough. Your trading performance history is also important. It is essential to understand how much revenue you are capable of generating per year. After knowing these numbers, you can do calculations and conclude how big your account should be in order to achieve and annual income you desire. But trading is unpredictable, and you might have periods where you may not generate any income. It is strongly advised to keep separate accounts for trading, savings, and spending.

Frequency of Withdrawals

The frequency with which you withdraw from your trading account interferes with the growth of your trading account. If you have to spend a major share of the income you make then there is not much room for growth for your finances in trading. Compound interest is as near to the Holy Grail of trading as it gets, yet making withdrawals considerably reduces the effects of compounding.  The key to extraordinary growth is to leave your trading account undisturbed for as long as possible and let your capital work for you.

The tougher it is to break out and scale out the size, the more you will need to withdraw and the less you may retain in your trading account. This implies that making progress will be exceedingly difficult, and as a trader, you may still find yourself in a “rat race.”

Your Intentions

What is your motivation to come into trading? Is it because you want to make a huge amount of money while working short for short hours every day? If it is, then you are in the wrong place. Professional trading entails 12-hour workdays, and trading also heavily involves weekend labor. The majority of the time, you are secluded from other people and confined to your screen. Those with the wrong motivations frequently get a harsh awakening and lack the perseverance to stick with it when things get difficult. Furthermore, trading might not be the best option for you if you are a social person in general.

According to the study, traders who are only interested in making money are more likely to lose money overall. Make sure you understand what full-time trading entails in order to avoid falling into this trap.

A Better Approach to Trading

When you read all the conditions above, you might realize that you might not be ready to be a full-time trader. But there are ways to slowly bring yourself into this profession. A few steps are given below to make the trading work for you even if you are not a professional trader yet.

Adding instead of Withdrawing

Invest the money you earn from your regular day job into your account to accelerate its growth, rather than taking it out to cover daily expenses. As was already mentioned, taking money out causes a major reduction in the effectiveness of compound interest. Increasing the amount in your trading account can have a significant impact and accelerate the growth of your capital. Therefore, make use of this advantage to continue increasing your trading funds and avoid quitting your full-time profession too soon.

Reduce Expenditures

It takes both efforts to be able to support yourself through trading. There are two methods to become financially independent: first, you need to earn more money than you spend. Secondly, you reduce your expenditures and hence lower the required amount of income you need to allocate for daily spending. If your expenditure makes up a major part of the revenue you generate in a month via trading then look for areas in the spending that you can cut back on. Of course, this doesn’t mean you have to live a frugal life. You can always go back to your old spending habits. But in the beginning stage of being a trader, you have to be cautious about the money you spend if you have to give up your day job and shift to the role of a full-time trader.

Trading as a Supplementary Source

The best course of action is frequently to view trading as an additional source of income. Pursuing a full-time trading lifestyle will not work out if you like your job, value human interaction, and cannot imagine spending 12 hours a day in front of a screen. Trading may be a fun and interesting way to earn extra money. “Trading on the side” is perfectly acceptable, and individuals who lead balanced lives frequently see improvements in their trading as well. You may trade much more freely if you are not under the burden of needing to generate a profit in order to pay your monthly expenses.

How to Become a Full-Time Trader: Steps to Become a Full-Time Trader

Becoming a full-time trader is a dream for many people. Follow the steps given below to become a full-time trader.

Study the Basics of Trading

Understanding the fundamentals of Forex trading is the first step toward becoming a full-time trader. It makes sense because you can’t make profitable transactions if you don’t understand the basics. You need to have perfect information and training about Forex and Forex trading. So, doing a Forex trading course will help you gain knowledge of Forex! You will start to see greater outcomes with real money trading once you comprehend what the Forex market is, which fundamental trading methods are used, and why the market exists

Formulate an Effective Trading Strategy

Mastering one trading strategy is the best way to attain success in trading. But this could take years. Once you learn a strategy, you can learn another one and then another and so on. Ultimately you will be able to formulate your own trading style. The best way to begin is to pick a strategy that is easier for you to learn. Just because someone else was successful while using a strategy, it is not necessary that it will work for everyone. So don’t force yourself to adopt a strategy too difficult for you just because you found someone had used it successfully.

You must find the way that suits you the most. This is because the strengths, thought processes and capabilities of every person are different. That is why so many different tactics for trading exist. Sometimes you should be courageous enough to take the long route to profitability. The most profitable forex traders follow a more complicated path to profitability because they test multiple strategies before settling on one. If you wish to become an expert trader, you must study several approaches and tactics.

Set Realistic Expectations

Being honest with yourself and setting realistic expectations is essential for the psychology of a good trader. This entails recognizing what is currently possible and not making trades that are larger than the size of your trading account. You must understand that you should never take on more risk in a trade than you can afford to lose. You have to make smaller trades if your trading account is modest. A significant aspect of FX trading is risk control. The majority of full-time forex traders fail because they worry about not making as much money as they had hoped to or about not becoming wealthy quickly. Making wise deals and gradually increasing your trading account should be your main priorities. Bigger profits will come after that.

Make a Plan According to the Chosen Strategy

After deciding on a particular strategy, make a trading plan that supplements it. Before beginning to trade in the markets, you must have a price action forex trading strategy. The good news is that developing a successful forex trading strategy is not difficult. For anyone aspiring to become a full-time trader, this trading plan is an essential component that will serve as a roadmap for you to follow. If you wish to refrain from overtrading or overleveraging your account, you need to practice self-control and concentration. Your forex trading plan will accomplish exactly this. It will guarantee that you avoid trading impulsively and incurring losses in the market.

Demo Trade

It is advisable to test your trading technique on demo-trading accounts once you have mastered it and created a strong trading plan to complement it. Many traders disregard demo trading because they believe it is unnecessary. Demo trading is crucial, nevertheless, if you want to pursue trading as a full-time career. It aids in acquainting you with the trading platform. For anyone hoping to become a full-time trader, it is crucial. Many traders would commit careless mistakes just because they are inexperienced with the FX trading software.

Prior to trading with real money, serious forex traders ought to practice their skills on demo trades in order to improve their trading strategy and achieve consistent profitability for at least three months. Demo trading is also encouraged because it involves no emotions. It will get you ready to trade on the currency market with actual money.

Risk Management

If being a full-time forex trader is your goal, risk management should be your first priority. Risk management is critical because, without it, you will never be able to increase the amount in your account since you would be losing more money than you can afford to lose. You should be aware of the two essential elements of risk management in the FX market: position sizing and the strength of risk-reward. One of the biggest reasons amateur forex traders don’t consistently turn a profit is that they don’t control their risk. They don’t have a “perfect” trading method, which is why they take a lot of risks. They lose money because they trade recklessly and aimlessly in the absence of a trading strategy.

Fundamental and Technical Analysis

Examining price charts and indicators to spot trends, patterns, and possible trading opportunities is known as technical analysis. Acquire knowledge of oscillators and other technical indicators, moving averages, and candlestick patterns. Making wise trading selections will be aided by your mastery of technical analysis. Evaluating a company’s or economy’s financial performance is a fundamental analysis task. Learn how to evaluate news stories that affect the markets, financial statements, and economic indicators. Fundamental analysis supplements technical analysis by providing a deeper perspective on prospective trades.

Selecting a platform and Broker

Making a smooth trading experience requires choosing a reputable broker and trading platform. Think about things like customer service, trading tools, costs and commissions, user-friendliness, and the variety of tradable assets. A reliable regulatory body, like the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), should be in charge of overseeing the broker.

Psychology of a Trader

The final step toward becoming a full-time trader is to grasp the trading psychology of an experienced full-time trader and how they approach trading. Professional traders view trading as a business and will only take measured risks, whereas amateur traders are more likely to gamble in the markets. If you win a few transactions in a row when you’re first starting out, it’s easy to get carried away. Then, you might make a dumb error and forfeit all of the gains from your earlier trades. Because they are disciplined and do not become emotional whether they win or lose a few transactions in a row, professional traders will never make that error.

Trading Journal

Keep a trading diary to keep track of your deals, including entry and exit points, reasons for each trade, and the result of it. Regularly analysing your trades allows you to pinpoint trends, advantages, and disadvantages, which helps you improve your trading tactics.

What Is the Average Full-Time Trader Salary?

Comparably states that the typical full-time trader in the US earns between $37,500 and $155,300 annually. Thus, it is not necessary to trade shifts seven days a week if your goal is to earn roughly $100,000 a year. All you have to do is make at least $2,000 every week in profits. If you know the fundamentals, market insights, and other important facts, it’s not that difficult.

Should Full-Time Traders Pay Taxes?

They certainly should. Taxes are due from all traders, whether they work full-time or part-time. It includes a certain amount of possible earnings reduction. Your trading approach will determine how much you have to pay. For instance, while day traders are not eligible for a favourable tax treatment, long-term investors are.

“How to Become a Full-Time Trader?’ may sound like a simple question. But it is not. Trading full-time may seem like a dream come true. In actuality, there are a lot of challenges, things to learn, and practice. It is hard work. It involves self-control, time and money management, careful preparation, and a ton of study. Before quitting your regular jobs, be sure you are fully prepared to take on the challenge.

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How to Become a Full-Time Trader FAQs

1. Which are the best options when it comes to trading? Compare and contrast them.

A comparison of three trading options discussed on the page is given below.

2. Can I work another job and become a full-time trader?

Although it is feasible to trade part-time and work another job, becoming a full-time trader takes a substantial amount of effort and dedication. To improve your chances of success, it is advised that you give trading your whole attention, particularly in the beginning when you are still learning.

3. How much time does it take to start making money trading?

It takes different people different amounts of time to become profitable traders. It depends on things like how well you can learn, how committed you are, and how much time you can commit to trading. In general, developing the requisite skills and achieving consistent profitability requires many months to a few years of persistent effort and practice.

4. What is the required amount of capital to begin trading full-time in India?

The amount of money needed to begin trading full-time varies depending on a number of variables, including your trading style, living costs, and risk tolerance. Having a sizable quantity of capital or reserves to absorb possible losses and maintain your lifestyle during the early stages of full-time trading is advised.

5. Is it possible for me to trade on several financial markets at once?

Indeed, trading in a variety of financial markets at the same time—including stocks, commodities, and currencies—is possible. Nonetheless, it necessitates a thorough comprehension of every industry as well as the capacity to successfully handle several positions. It’s advised to start small and work your way up to a larger market as you develop confidence and experience.