Cycletimer,
What I said about 15k from trading for a living, there is a lot to consider, when one no longer has a day job, the monthly expenses have to be
withdrawn from the trading account to live on, if you start off with 50k in the account then most of that is going to be gone by the end of the year
so you need to double your account to stay even for the next year, but with less and less money to trade with throughout the year because of
withdrawals it's going to be very difficult to reach the 100% gain when you are down to only 20k to work with. Most traders lose money, the
ones that don't, most don't beat the market, and the remaining few probably don't make more than 100% gain. So 100k or more would be best
starting off, but still no guarantee it won't be a bad year and actually lose money. One could also take big losses in the first half and have a
good second half and make it all back and a little more but still not meet the 15k minimum for the subsidy. I agree that patience is needed
to wait for good signals, but patience gets tested as the yearly clock is ticking and withdrawals are happening and it's been awhile since a good setup so one might feel under pressure to force trades that are 50/50 odds. I think 250k min. is more reliable but not many are going to have that much in early retirement. All this is under the parameters of a conservative position size trader, an aggressive size option trader could do better and could also lose a lot if not waiting for the right setups. I think the key is getting living expenses really low, no house or car payments.
Edited by CLK, 23 June 2018 - 07:33 AM.