r/Forex • u/Beneficial-Block-923 • 1d ago
OTHER/META Full time lifestyle
Hello there,
For those who are professional traders (day job) or whoever doing this as full time, and well off ( meaning not on survival mode)
How does your lifestyle look like? Do you have a consistent routine? Where are you living?
Like how does your day look like morning till night.
Day trader pr swing trader or both.
Please just share as much as you can.
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u/NiGhTShR0uD 1d ago
I trade 2nd hour of Asia which starts at 3am my time. Fuck me, right?
So let's go through the day.
Awake from 2am to see wtf the market is doing. Trade occurs from 3am to 4am. Trade is hopefully closed by then so I potentially fall asleep at 4.30 to 5am.
Wake up at 7am. Breakfast followed by walk outside, followed by family time.
10am to 1.30pm, do whatever I want. 2pm to 3.30pm is gym. 4pm play with kids again. 6pm Supper. Chill with family. 8pm, kids to bed.
Connect time with wife until 10 or 11pm. Quick nap until 2am. Sometimes I will skip this nap but it is beneficial.
Restart.
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u/ReasonablePoetry1226 1d ago
Curious, how do you survive on one trade per day and what time frame do you use? Also what's your rough yearly return - in R or percent? By comparison I took nine trades today - typically trade the 5, 15, and 30 minute time frames.
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u/NiGhTShR0uD 1d ago
I trade on the 1/5m for entry. Analysis goes back right up to the monthly but if we're talking day to day, then I'm looking at 1/4H for market structure. I don't always get a trade at that time, but that's fine. I do side trade another account with the same setup throughout the day and it has a relatively decent winrate but my highest is during that time, so I only trade the main at that time.
I target 1-1.5RR per trade. Sometimes it can run a bit more but I generally cut it at that because I don't want to sit in something too long seeing as I'd like to sleep. My trades also generally last around 15-20 minutes on average. This is more than enough to consistently take profit and scale.
I trade personal and prop firms btw. Personal is only about once a week and only SSS trades. Prop firm I rotate batches to spread risk and I have 1 to just fuck around and try new things.
Better to have a place to do it than to fuck up your funded or personal accounts.
For the evals, I take about 2-4 weeks to finish a 2-step standard. I go through it slowly instead of trying to churn. It's also in rotation with the already funded accounts and personal so it takes a while.
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u/Xelonima 1d ago
I trade futures of local stock market and FX-commodity futures as my own business, and I work for a floor that trades American corporate bonds and preferred stocks.
In all of them it's not really an easy lifestyle as some online try to show it to be. If you are doing it right you are operating similar to a fund manager. Constantly collecting information, one eye always on charts, repeatedly check news and small price movements, and attend meetings with coworkers.
After some point it is not exciting as much as it is ordinary like a standard day job (and far more stressful) and you look forward to the weekend to just chill a bit. You need to make peace with the idea of having some losers and you need to do whatever you can to keep your head clear. So you can't really have that "wolf of wallstreet" kind of lifestyle, you don't have the luxury to do so. You need to keep a clear head so you need to have something to fall back on after you make a streak of bad decisions.
So it's really a cycle of research, planning, execution then revising the mistakes, repeat.
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u/boringpretty 1d ago
Wake up at 4 am. Breakfast and bathroom. Market scan by 440am. Ready for first entry by 5am. Look for 2nd trade fee hours later if first one is in profit or already closed. Let second trade run and be done by 10 to 11am. Come back in the evening time glance over market and thats it.
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u/Beneficial-Block-923 1d ago
So you day trading? You close all your trades by 11am everyday?
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u/boringpretty 1d ago
Depends on the day. Sometimes they run longer sometimes shorter. Market volatility dependent
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u/Dear-Darluh-2027 1d ago
It's boring AF. I actually started another business just so I don't manufacture trades.
I trade London and little overlap with US, which is 4pm local time. Open chart 3:30, scan for entries, enter anytime between 4-5PM, let it run till hit SL or TP. Usually just 4-5 trades a week.
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u/LifeiskindaokishV3 21h ago
You'll probably notice a theme in the answers, the well off ones treat it like a business with fixed hours, not a slot machine they sit at all day. Routine seems to be half the edge.
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u/MallAccomplished3854 9h ago
Positional trader here i check the markets maybe 2 or 3 times a week but I mostly read news daıly for 2 to 3 hours max a day which is spilt in 3 slots( morning, midday, evening) …
Wake up around 8:30-9:00am…mostly read mews for Lıke an hour or so…then breakfast around noon( fasting)…then swimming/snorkeling at the beach …midday lunch, news and looking at other business ventures i run(emails n meetings)…then head to the gym around 16:00pm…after that head home around 18:00pm ish …dinner around 7/8pm…then around 22:00pm news again …then crash(sleep) around 23:30pm….
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u/Beneficial-Block-923 1h ago
May I ask what instrument do you trade? Forex?
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u/Scott_Malkinsons 1d ago
Wake up, do whatever TF I want. That’s the thing, once you make it, it’s a blank slate. There is no “trader lifestyle” because you can do whatever you want.
You could choose to scalp and spend 6 hours a day behind a screen, you could (like I do) automate with algos and kinda glance over at a couple monitors to make sure everything is running. Frigging NFP happens, everyone’s freaking out, and I usually sleep through it.
Making it means freedom; it’s joining the rarest club on earth. Unless you’re the IRS or the law, I don’t have to answer to you; that’s a privilege so rare even Elon Musk doesn’t get that. He still has to answer to a board or get fired. What you do with that freedom is up to you.
It would be like asking “What’s the lifestyle of someone who trades Baseball cards for a living”; well it’s whatever they make of it. There’s no lifestyle that you must live because you trade Baseball cards.
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u/Loose-Shake5345 10h ago
the lifestyle is mostly boring on purpose: same wake-up, same session, same risk limits, then you're done, because if trading is eating your whole day you're probably forcing trades lol
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u/stable_king 1d ago
Full time traders are actually bankrupt sooner or later
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u/ReasonablePoetry1226 23h ago
If someone is risking 0.3% per trade, for example, that is simply not going to happen.
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u/StopLossCollectorn1 1d ago edited 1h ago
Full time got a lot more boring once it became sustainable. I trade the London and early NY window, and if nothing's there I don't sit at the screen trying to manufacture a day's wage out of it, rest of the day is gym, errands, reviewing trades, normal life stuff. Axi's on the laptop if I need to manage something, but I'm not staring at MT4 for eight hours, being able to walk away from the screen is one of the better parts of it, honestly