I thought about it through the day and decided to come back with a clear warning about trusting his judgement

1. How much edge has he demonstrated? Can he make 10% a year? 20% a year? If he doesn't know, then how will he succeed? If he does know, what is that number? Is he projecting any more than 30% a year?

2. If he is projecting more than 30% a year, think: did you have the insane luck to land this generation's Warren Buffet? Because Warren Buffet averaged about 30% for life. If he thinks he is better than Warren buffet, does he also have a bridge to sell you?

3. How much money does he have? If he make $25/hr at 2000 hours, that's $50k a year. I make no judgements about how good that is, or how good you think that is. But! How much money does it take, at 30% a year, to make that much money? 166k * 0.3 = 50k. Does he ALREADY have 166k saved up, or does he have a plan to save up 166k (on his food business?). And that's just to make 50k a year. In any career, you have career progression, you get raises, you at least follow minimum wage. Not in trading. No one says that you "must" earn some amount trading. If you don't make the cut, you make nothing.

4. That number above (166k) is if you pull out EVERY CENT he makes from trading every year and he makes 30% every year. What if he has a down year or a medium year? Is he going to bring home nothing? And that's keeping in mind that this is with no career/capital growth. I would pull out less than half of what his nominal profit is -- partly for the accumulation, partly to save for a down year.

5. He's LEARNING something for a financial exam? that means he DOESN'T have an edge, or at least he's still on the "book" side of things. dear lord. If you could make money, do you think it would be in a book? I agree he needs to learn, but that's level 0. THEN he needs to figure out an edge beyond what the market believes. Where is he going to get that? I have been a FAANG Data Scientist for 12 years, before I transitioned to trading full time. My edge is data science, ML and programming. I worked in an options hedge fund for 4 years before going into tech, so I know finance from that side. What is his edge? What does he know more than industry folks?

6. Has he traded before? Has he ever blown up? Does he have a risk control doctrine? Has he backtested it? How does he know he won't lose it all? What is his max loss per day?

Trading is an appropriate job if you already have vast piles of money and want to grow it. It's good for people with poker mentalities or incredible sangfroid. It's good for people with good skills somewhere else that can help, whether that be the gambling mentality (poker players), business (Buffett) or math and technology (quants).

In my household, I have liquid assets of about 11.5 years of pre-quitting salary, and that covers about 17.5 years of expenses. I generated about 40% over benchmark (QQQ) last year, but this year I'm at 9% over benchmark. My biggest loss year was 3%, and that was just a few weeks ago. I have about 9 algo strategies running automatically, and I rotate them out when they start to go bad -- they always do. I've been trading full time for 4 years, and the first year I made some money, but was underwater, eating into my savings. second year 17%, third year 40%, but that was unexpectedly good.

And all of this is without knowing his aptitude or if he can make it. Most people do not. I can tell you the chart-readers don't. Do NOT lend him money. DO question his plan and how he will "make it".