Regards.

And you are 100% right about expenses and choosing the right place to live; I took that advice as far as planning to leave from US and settle in another country if need be. I was not born in the US so that makes it easier for me.

Last week I stupidly lost $4000 (!), my first big loss after almost 6 months of steady growing. So I am basically re-thinking my strategies and my overall plans.

At least I know what I did wrong and why I did it wrong.. hope not to repeat it again!

1. Tim trades with very little money. His trading earnings will skyrocket as his accounts grow.

2. Tim trades a lot less than he used to trade; he has to worry about TimAlerters piggybacking on his trades. He would be more profitable (although his winning percentage would be lower) if he didn’t have TimAlerts.

3. I trade like Tim and generally suck at less than ideal setups, despite not having an alert service and plenty of cash. Also, my best trading strategy has underperformed this year because I have been aiming for home runs instead of singles. I would likely be up $80k+ using this strategy this year if I had not aimed for home runs.

So while it isn’t impossible to trade for a living, it is hard. One of the keys for me at least is to keep living expenses low … I don’t have to make more than $50k per year, living in Michigan … someone living in SoCal or NYC would have to make at least four times that to have my standard of living.

This is what I think:

I make ~ $75k/year on my day job (computer programmer) and I my ultimate goal would be to become an independent day-trader (no more day job) and maybe also programing but not as an employee (I am a terrible employee). I have been trading for the last 6 months, following Tim’s strategy and whoever can help me to be a better trader.

Now considering the fact that:
1. I consider you to be a far superior trader than I am
2. I would like to match or improve my current day job wages.

Then I have to say that my ultimate goals are fading into a never-happen cloud

Also: from timothysykes.com I can see Tim’s earnings explained at http://timothysykes.com/blog/2009/10/27/how-did-my-account-perform-in-september-now-up-103-in-2009-short-selling-yup-the-only-short-seller-doing-well-table/ (stock market earnings – forget about DVDs and blog earnings). He made ~ $80k in the last 2 years .

Of course I also consider Timothy as a trader to be a lot lot better than me, his covestor’s earnings are crushing not only my account but anybody else’s accounts at covestor.com .. Still he made less than $90k in 2 years?

Is all that telling me that I better stick to programming and forget about my in dependency hot dreams?!!!

I’m glad it makes you some money since that means you are more likely to keep doing it.

Thanks for putting up the profit margins, I think the additional context really helps clarify a bit of what your results are really like and gives your returns much greater credibility.

I think it should hopefully help you get some referrals sales for TimProducts etc.