Hi, I’m Matt. I juggle daytrading with being a Dad of 1.5 (she’s pregnant again!) and working 60 hours per week.
I’m on a mission, like many of you, to make trading into a career. I’m not in it for lambos or yachts, I’m in this to give my kids a good life. To have the flexibility to have days off when I want to spend time with them. To have uncapped income potential, and live and die by my own performance. Hopefully not the dying part.
Why I’m Here
I intend to blog my journey, using this site for fully transparent accountability. It will be used for updates on the progress towards my goals, a brain-dump for various strategies, studies and ideas, and hopefully a time capsule that I can look back on with pride.
Full transparency – my job sucks. I make an above average wage in the UK, but primarily because I work 60 hours per week, that’s 1.5x the normal 40 hour week. I’m at a dead end in terms of career progression. The best part about my job is I can get a good amount of chart time at work, at least a couple of hours after the London Open and most days I can trade the first 2 hours of the US equities open.
The Journey
My partner is pregnant, so I’m on a mission to finally take this from a hobby, a passion, an all-consuming obsession into something that’s going to change our lives.
I know how naive that sounds. I’ve been in the game long enough to have seen many people come and go, I was a member of /r/WallStreetBets long before Gamestop made it mainstream or the COVID driven trading frenzy. I had dabbled with crypto for a couple of years before the 2017 bubble and subsequent pop. I’ve physically lost or destroyed more trading books than most traders own.
That’s not a brag, I’ve always remained a small fish. I’ve blown accounts that would’ve made most people quit by now. I’ve been through the cycles all traders go through; the indicators, the algo trading, bingeing on books and podcasts, making the same mistakes far too many times before learning from them. Stocks, Crypto, Forex, Futures, I’ve run the gamut. I must be pretty damn close to my 10,000 hours by now. I’ve experienced the highs and lows and survived with at least half of my sanity.
The Goals
My second child is due in December 2023 so I’ve got an incentive to really take this to the next level, now. I have a window of opportunity, and a series of goals.
- To have over $400k funding with prop firms by December 2023. Currently at a measly $20k live funding, but use profits to fund higher value evaluations. I’m in a $100k evaluation stage 1 right now, paid for with the profits from the $20k account.
- To make enough money that my partner doesn’t have to go back to work after her maternity leave. That gives me until roughly September 2024. I’ll make a separate post detailing what “enough” is to me.
- To have moved into a nicer house in a nicer area before my daughter turns 5 (she’s 2 in August). I’ll talk more about this in future.
Specific, ambitious but realistic goals, with deadlines. A further goal without a deadline is to scale back the hours in my job and replace that income with trading income.
I hope some of you will follow along. Feel free to reach out, I don’t have enough trading buddies and you can never have too many.
Bring on the good vibes and good trading.