That may be true. But there are only a handfull of financial capitals in the world that offer asset manager roles but you can be a professional day trader in any location on earth with access to internet.
My route is unconventional - i didnt go through a normal full-time university course. Started working full-time and doing night school after high sch and mandatory national service. Completed acctg course and local jurisdiction CPA on a part-time basis, with 8-12 hrs work days (often times more than 12 hrs). 8-9 yrs exp. Less than USD 60K (but gd enough, decent wages, can support family and with some savings).
Depends on which sector you are working in, i suppose. However, employers here tend to significantly favour lower cost foreign workers (they call foreigners working in Singapore ‘foreign talent’) so bear in mind wages are not really high as those international HR reports would like us to believe.
I’ve read somewhere that George Soros used to say to a roomful of portfolio manager hopefuls that in 5 yrs time more than two-thirds of them will get washed out of their careers (by the markets)
I think he’s saying that he is simply happy he isn’t an accountant. That statement describes a lot of people on this site, myself included. Your salary range for CA/CPAs is appropriate. I made mid 50s in my first year working for a Big 4 firm. But at the end of the day, I hated the work and was expected to work an obscene number of hours. I also realized that most corporate accounting jobs are dreadfully repetitive. If the work floats your boat, that’s great though. It’s an extremely low risk, decent reward career path.
Wages for accountants in the US should be higher than in Singapore (maybe 20-30% more, taking into account real increase and foreign exchange differences), but i think income tax here is comparatively much lower.
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85lpWoESHUM autoplay:0]
This thread highly reminds me of this short video.
One cartoon character uses the F word towards the end. Watch this alone, or use headphones
I think making a successful trading career takes much more effort than that. I think it takes somewhere 5-10 years before you find the method which suits your personality and statistical edge and lets not even consider the emotional pain with losing money, though there are exceptions. Took 8 years, 10000s of books, lost MONEY . I think its much much more psychological than anything to do with have an “edge”. It all depends what you love to do and how bad you want. I see a nice “Insurance plan” on my trading plan because I fail. Atleast I wont die hungry.
-“Win or lose, everybody gets what they want out of the market. Some people seem to like to lose, so they win by losing money.” Ed Seykota
CFA *
kk got it right. the accountant statement was completely unrelated to the rest of the post. just something us CFAs say.
if choosing a career path is based solely on salary and stability of that salary, why not try to go the actuary route? boring work but damn does it pay well and you have the best possible job security. or why not just sign up to be an air traffic controller? or skip post secondary all together and become a garbage man?
I know several people who tried day trading and can say that only one can be called relatively successful. The advantage for this person is that his wife makes very good living working in health care, and that is his safety net. I don’t know if would have made it without such support system in place.
As for making money from trading - it’s up and down for him, it will not make him rich for sure.
I’ve always argued that actuary has the best $$$/hours work ratio.