Short view – It could get lonely and frustrating, plus dangerous for your sanity and financial well-being.

Long view – First, a clarification. I am not a full-time investor i.e., I and my family are not dependent for our living on the stock market. I earn my living by teaching people how to invest sensibly in stocks and how not to wrack-up it up as an investor, and by selling books. And I invest a large portion of my savings in stocks. But I won’t have sleepless nights if the stock market were to tank tomorrow and remain lanugo for the next year or two, considering that is not what earns me my oats and sprouts (I don’t eat “bread and butter” you see).

Anyways, the reason I am writing this post is considering this is that phase in the market where I see a few questions from readers well-nigh how they could quit their jobs to wilt full-time investors in the stock market.

In most of my replies, I have asked people to stave quitting their jobs to wilt full-time investors, and here are five reasons I have often mentioned to support my reasoning. In specimen you have had this question but were wrung to ask, I hope what follows unelevated helps you take a decision.

Please do not consider my arguments as discouragement if you really want to wilt a full-time investor (though investing is not a full-time worriedness anyways). I am just sharing what I have learned and experienced over the years, and you are welcome to ask increasingly questions and share your thoughts or counter-arguments in the Comments section of this post.

5 Reasons You Must Not Quit Your Job to Wilt a Full-Time Investor

1. You do not have to get rich through investing – With the last few years of reasonably good performance from the overall market, and with a lot of people flouting their multi-baggers on social media, it isn’t surprising that many people who want to quit their jobs to wilt full-time investors considering they think they have a “knack for finding potential multi-baggers.”

But such thoughts are often masked by survivorship bias, which is a logical error of concentrating only on people or things that “survived” some process and inadvertently overlooking those that did not. So, taking inspiration from other full-time investors who have made good, quick, money from stocks and ignoring others who followed similar processes but ended up with disasters can lead you to false conclusions well-nigh your own potential as a full-time investor.

What is more, like them, you don’t need to consider investing as a way to make you rich…but a way to keep you rich i.e., help you grow your purchasing power.

Look at your work – job / profession / merchantry – to make you rich and thus focus increasingly energy and focus there than on the stock market. That is flipside reason most of us should consider owning only high-quality businesses where we don’t have to spend a lot of time answering a lot of questions.

2. Investing is not your passion – Yes, I know that the stock market gets you excited and that you think you have a passion for stocks. But if you could squint deep within, you may realize that what gets you excited isn’t the idea of “investing in stocks,” but the idea of “investing in stocks that will rise and make you rich quick.” Or why else do you wait for Monday with unconfined excitement if not for the kick that logging into your online portfolio tracker gives you? Yes, yes, I have been through that and thus could relate to it very well (now I don’t maintain an online portfolio tracker).

For a lot of people in the stock market, “I have a passion for equities” is often a result – and not a rationalization – of “I have made good money from stocks in the last few months/years.” Most of us goof to distinguish between luck and skill in stock investing – both for ourselves and for people who boast well-nigh their unconfined picks on social media. And passion for equities often dies with a sliding stock market.

So please beware – know unmistakably what you are passionate about, and it may not have to be the stock market.

3. You have not experienced a deep/long withstand market – When I say “experienced”, it’s when you had 80% of your savings invested in stocks that went lanugo 50% . As I can assess from the emails people send me asking whether they should quit their jobs to wilt full-time investors, most of them have been investing/speculating in stocks for less than 5-7 years. This means, they have not experienced a long/deep withstand market in equities with a large part of their money invested…which ways their guts haven’t been tested for staying sane in a rough market.

If this is true for you too, please don’t get lanugo to full-time investing surpassing you proceeds this experience. In fact, if you seriously want to get lanugo to rhadamanthine a full-time investor, first learn how to do it sensibly, test your skills (by investing part of your savings in stocks) and guts for owning stocks for a minimum of five years and trammels how you fared in this period. Only then make your decision.

4. You may not have a solid support sytem – It’s easier for you to convince your family as you start full-time investing without flipside regular source of income. You have the savings to survive for a couple of years (that’s very important), your spouse believes in your worthiness to do well, and your kids would love to see you spend some increasingly time with them.

But then, this is easier compared to what? Well, it’s easier compared to keeping yourself and your family convinced for increasingly than 1-2 years in specimen your investments do not earn well unbearable to help you maintain your living standards. Or if you do not have an unobjectionable value of wanted invested that brings you sufficient income as dividends.

If that happens to be the case, your support system may be at a risk of breaking down, which may ultimately lead you to take bad, unceremonious investment decisions. It’s could wilt a vicious trundling then.

So, plane if you aim to wilt a full-time investor, ensure that you have a regular source of income – maybe through a small merchantry or a part-time job or if your spouse is ready to take the lead earner role happily. That would requite you time, confidence, and savings to work towards your aim to wilt a full-time investor.

5. You have not handled loneliness and wearisomeness well in the past – Stuff on your own can wilt terribly lonely at times. Plus, if you are an investor and have no new stock idea to work on – maybe the markets wilt expensive wideness the workbench – it could get very wearisome too. If you have never experienced such emotions of loneliness and wearisomeness in the past, be forewarned, for these can lead you take bad investment decisions just considering you don’t have a habit of inaction, or sitting still, when everyone virtually you is acting. The pressure to “do something” is often so great, that people do the wrong thing when they’d have been largest doing nothing.

Of course, you can find investing partners or groups to prorogue your loneliness, the silence you wits from time to time of stuff a full-time solo investor can be deafening.

Still Wish to Quit Your Job?
Despite my discouragement, if you still wish to quit your job to wilt full-time investor, or pursue some other passion, here is a checklist that may help you. These are some lessons from my wits in quitting my job, so they may guide you in some way in specimen you are sailing in the same wend as I was increasingly than a decade when –

• You don’t need to quit your job if you can work on your passion for investing or something else alongside. In fact, quitting your job must be the last resort, or when you find the undersong unbearable and abusive.
• Quitting a job and living a fulfilling life isn’t as easy as those who have washed-up it would make out to be. Things get scary at times.
• Quitting you job will stupefy others in your life, so it’s hair-trigger that you have an honest conversation with your family first and get their buy into the decision.
• Learn an important and sellable skill surpassing you quit your job to start on your own. You must have an unorganized source of income to sustain your family, just in specimen the stock market doesn’t fathom your visualization and doesn’t reward you for the risk you took
• Quitting a job to live as an investor can be a path to hell. Don’t expect investing to make you rich, but to alimony you rich. It’s the earning from your work, and what you do with it, that will make you rich.
• Practice minimalism and lean living at least a year or two surpassing you plan to quit your job. Instant compromises are heart breaking!
• Save money to use as initial wanted for your business, and then alimony your expenses low. Don’t infringe money for your merchantry till the time you aren’t generating cash. As an investor, you hate mazuma guzzling businesses, right?
• Don’t believe people who tell you – “How I quit my job, doubled my pay and cut my hours in half”…or something like this. They will not help you if you reach a point of no return.

All clear?

You have my weightier wishes if you still want to quit your job to wilt a full-time investor…or if you want to quit your job to pursue something else.

I will be happy to help, in specimen you have any questions that I can try and answer.

And, by the way, to wordplay the question of how one can prepare to wilt a full-time investor, here is a checklist I have drawn for people who want to ignore my warnings and get into full time investing. In this checklist, expressly note the consequences of getting it wrong.

Checklists save lives, in aviation and medicine, and moreover in tasks that involve a lot of biases and uncertainties…like investing.

I hope this checklist helps save some (financial) lives too.