I admit it. I don’t trade for a living.


I received an email recently from a gentleman who accused me of not really making a living off my trading. My response to that is “Guilty as charged!”

Let me state it clearly for the record. I do not now, nor have I ever traded for a living – and I do not anticipate ever doing so in the future. A long time ago I realized there was nothing about trading for a living that interested me.

While I love the markets and the opportunities they provide, I do not want to have to spend long periods of time on a daily basis focused on them trying to make a living. It’s not for me. There are too many negatives related to my trading effectiveness, my health, and my overall personal well-being.

I’ve learned how best I operate in the markets, and doing it full-time with my livelihood constantly in play is not it. If you’ve read The Essentials of Trading, you know I talk a lot about the need to have your trading mesh with your personality in order to be really effective.

The thing that really irked me about the email I received, though, is how the author implied that if you don’t trade for a living, you are not a “real trader”.  That sort of arrogance and narrow-mindedness makes me really angry.

I trade the markets to build wealth. I want to grow my assets. It’s that simple.

Although trading for a living and trading to build wealth require different approaches, they have a lot of fundamental similarities. It’s still trading, after all. One must still identify good trading opportunities, have strong risk management, and handle positions well.

Neither is necessarily better. Trading for a living is about trying to make x-amount each day or week, while trading to build wealth takes a longer-term view toward growing a portfolio. Only you can make the determination which is better for you.

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About the Author
John Forman, author of this blog, has traded for more than 20 years, is a professional market analyst, and authored The Essentials of Trading. He is an active participant in trading forums, consults for trading related businesses, as published literally dozens of trading articles, and has been quoted in a number of books and in the media.
** See John’s full bio.

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  • Jeffrey Sim

    Hi John,

    I am been browsing yor site recently till I came to this article. I just posted a reply to the price-distribution article.

    In this article, I totally agreed with you that one needs not be trading full time for a living in order to be called a trader.Indeed, trading or full-time trading is not for everyone.Been fully capitalized in a very important consideration as well as having enough extra cash to tie through drawdowns which will happen to any trading method or system.

    The point you made about trading needed to fit into your overall personality is interesting and valid. Not many people actually gave much thoughts to that as they thought trading means ‘easy money’ with a a few simple mouse clicks.

    Your article really sets me thinking about whether my personality is suited to be traidng the markets on a full time basis. That was my original intention for many years since I started trading the markets while holding a day job.

    Thanks once again for this great article.
    Jeff