Retire Early from Trading
Retiring early is a dream shared by many, but achieved by few. Most people imagine a path paved through tech startups, lucky investments, or perhaps frugal living and index funds.
For the narrator of the story below, however, early retirement didn’t come from minimalist budgeting or Silicon Valley, but from quantitative trading, a high-pressure, high-reward field.
We look at the journey of the “Lit Nomad” (we’ll refer to him as LM throughout the article) from a traditional job in defense engineering to the ultra-competitive field of proprietary (prop) trading.
Key Takeaways – Retire Early from Trading
- Performance Pays Fast – In quant trading, success is rewarded immediately with high payouts, sometimes exceeding $1M in bonuses by your mid-20s.
- Speed Beats Prestige – Unlike traditional careers, trading offers rapid upside without decade-long grinds, time-consuming and expensive degrees, or massive debt.
- High Skill, High Pressure – It demands strong math and programming skills, emotional control, and tolerance for risk under constant performance scrutiny.
- Your Edge Must Be Real – Quant trading tends to reward speed. You win by outsmarting others in milliseconds – there’s no faking it when your P&L speaks daily. Discretionary trading is difficult.
- Freedom, Not Flash – Early retirement comes from mastering your craft, earning fast, and saving with intent.
From Missiles to Markets: Why Engineering Wasn’t Enough
The Beginning: Lockheed Martin and a $60K Salary
The story begins with a “safe” career path.
LM worked as a missile defense engineer at Lockheed Martin, one of the world’s largest defense contractors.
The role was prestigious, steady, and even noble, as it involved working on national defense projects.
But like many who’ve followed conventional career routes, he began to realize its limitations:
- Low financial upside – Even after years of experience, salary growth is modest.
- Limited autonomy – Projects were bound by bureaucratic processes.
- Slow trajectory – Climbing the ladder in traditional industries can take decades.
The Eye-Opening Moment: A $1M Bonus
The turning point came when a college friend, working at Jump Trading, casually revealed a $1 million bonus – at age 24.
His job entailed being a futures trader at a Chicago prop firm.
Suddenly, LM began to question his trajectory.
Why grind for decades in a safe job when there were peers earning life-changing sums in their mid-20s?
Understanding Quant and Prop Trading
What is Prop Trading?
Proprietary trading (prop trading) is when a firm trades stocks, derivatives, or other instruments with its own capital – not clients’ money.
Traders are given a share of their profits, creating enormous incentive to succeed.
Unlike hedge funds, prop firms don’t charge clients fees – they make or lose money on their own bets.
This creates:
- High risk: If you lose money, the firm eats the loss.
- High reward: If you’re profitable, commissions can reach 20–30%.
The Quantitative Edge
What makes quant trading distinct is the reliance on:
- Mathematical models
- High-frequency trading algorithms
- Market inefficiencies spotted via data
The environment is meritocratic, fast-paced, and demanding. But for the right minds, it’s a goldmine.
Why Quant Trading Was the Perfect Fit
Speed Over Prestige
Other high-earning professions like medicine were considered. But medicine comes with:
- A 10+ year grind
- Massive student debt and monthly interest payments
- Salaries that usually cap out in the mid-six-figure range (gross, not net)
Quant trading, by contrast, could yield multi-million-dollar earnings in a few short years – with no residency, no white coats, and no late-night hospital shifts.
IF you can do it…
The Culture: No Nonsense, Just Make Money
During interviews with trading firms, a key question stood out:
“Why are we here?”
The wrong answer was something noble like “to provide liquidity.”
The right answer was simple: “to make money.”
That brutal honesty was refreshing to LM.
In quant trading, there’s no corporate virtue signaling or inflated mission statements – just raw performance and reward.
Inside the Life of a Quant Trader
Gamified Chaos
Trading felt like a video game:
- Customized desks with Super Mario coin sounds for every winning trade.
- Lightning-fast decision-making.
- Real-time profits or losses displayed second by second.
One intern mistook LM’s setup for an actual video game – it wasn’t. It was real money, sometimes tens of thousands per day.
No Days Off
At the height of his trading success, LM was earning $2,000 per day, sometimes more.
That created a new kind of pressure: fear of missing out.
Even on vacation, the markets always offered (or at least potentially) offered something:
- What if volatility spikes?
- What if today’s the day I miss a $50,000 opportunity?
This culture of “feast or famine” was exhilarating, exhausting, and highly addictive.
Risk and Reward
One of the most powerful ideas in the video is the zero-sum nature of trading:
“If I win, someone else loses.”
It’s not like traditional business, where value is created for both parties.
In trading, especially quant strategies, profits come from anticipating the behavior of other participants.
As we wrote in our article on CTA strategies:
Profits often come from commercial hedgers, discretionary traders, or liquidity-seeking flows that react emotionally or slowly to macro changes, allowing CTAs to harvest alpha in repeatable, non-random ways.
This understanding of human behavior – and the ability to design systems to act on it in milliseconds or successfully trade in a discretionary way – is what separates the best traders from the rest.
The Secrecy of Prop Firms
Hidden in Plain Sight
Quant trading firms don’t typically flaunt their wealth.
Their websites are minimalist. Some don’t even have them, as they don’t provide services to the general public or clients.
Their offices are nondescript.
Their traders don’t wear Rolexes or drive Lamborghinis to the office.
Why?
Because if the public knew that 25-year-olds were earning $500K+ bonuses while sitting at terminals pushing buttons, it would invite scrutiny and resentment.
Chicago: The Quiet Hub
New York dominates media headlines, but Chicago quietly serves as the epicenter of global derivatives trading.
Firms like DRW, Jump, and Citadel have their roots here, and they continue to dominate with stealth and efficiency.
Downsides of the Lifestyle
Psychological Pressure
You’re only as good as your last month.
A losing streak could end your career. Bonuses fluctuate wildly.
There’s little job security and no safety net.
In some ways, it’s analogous to sports coaching.
LM describes seeing former colleagues at bars – some celebrating, others visibly shaken from a $100,000 loss earlier that day.
Ethical Dilemmas
Even traders don’t directly see the value of their work.
You’re not helping people directly. You’re not curing diseases or building bridges.
You’re beating others to money in a game with shifting rules. For some, this raises moral questions.
LM acknowledges this but emphasizes that:
“We don’t pretend to be something we’re not.”
That transparency was more ethical to him than pretending to change the world while serving shareholder interests, as in corporate roles.
In our view, is trading like this just a selfish thing?
No. Trading adds value to the economy by providing liquidity, enabling price discovery, facilitating risk management, optimizing capital allocation, and helping drive innovation and improvement across industries and the broader economy.
Economies are like Legos, and trading is an important part of supporting other roles.
Related
Final Reflections: Should You Do It?
Who Thrives in Quant Trading?
- High IQ + high EQ – Not just math/quant skills, but emotional control.
- Risk tolerance – You must be comfortable with large swings. (Of course, the goal is to always manage these drawdowns.)
- Deep curiosity – Learning never stops. Markets evolve over time.
- Solo confidence – You often work alone. Feedback is your P&L.
Who Should Avoid It?
- People who need structure and praise
- Those uncomfortable with uncertainty
- Anyone chasing it for status, not mastery
Is Early Retirement Real?
For LM – yes.
With high enough earnings and smart savings, he achieved financial freedom in less than a decade.
But he stresses that retirement isn’t about doing nothing.
It’s about doing what you choose – whether that’s travel, building businesses, or writing.
Conclusion: Trading Isn’t the Goal—Freedom Is
Quant trading isn’t for everyone. It’s stressful, lonely, and ethically gray (in the view of some).
But for those with the right temperament and skill set, it offers a fast track to financial independence.
The real takeaway isn’t to become a trader – it’s to understand your strengths, challenge societal norms, and find a path that fits you.
In a world full of safe options, sometimes the smartest thing you can do is bet on yourself – with precision, logic, and a little bit of luck.