This is likely a controversial opinion: 90% of the time, someone who wants to break out of the "rat race" or achieve wealth for some future vision should go the startup route, or if the wealth part is not as important, do freelance/consulting. However, I believe there are 10% of people where trading the markets provide the better way to achieve the same goal. The reason being that for certain personality types (you need to be smart, disciplined, and creative to beat the market, and it still requires a lot of time), I suspect trading offers a higher expected value of return than starting a bootstrapped company. Startups, especially those not started by someone wealthy, have a higher failure rate than day traders. If you are not passionate about anything you can get funding for (would SpaceX have been successful if it were Elon's first company?), and you fit the criteria, trading is not as terrible an option as its reputation suggests.