Fascinated by online stock trading? Learn about the pros and cons of day trading for beginners to help you decide if a day trading career is right for you.
Stock trading or share trading is no longer a domain of the lucky few. Prior to the age of the Internet, an investor would have called a stockbroker to buy or sell stocks and have to bear a hefty commission on those stock market trades.
If you didn’t happen to be at the right place at the right time you couldn’t keep a watch on the share market in real-time. The stories of investors having to bear losses in volatile markets are plenty.
All that changed when the Internet brought real-time share market information to our fingertips.
Since the advent of the Internet, both stock investors and day traders have had the opportunity to make their own decisions – and perhaps most importantly – time them perfectly without having to be at the mercy of the brokers.
With due respect to the community of veteran stockbrokers, investing in the stock market for an average investor was anything but easy.
If the Internet brought in the first revolution in stock market trading that allowed small investors to enter the market, smartphones have taken this convenience to the next level.
Whether you are working at your site outside the comforting environs of your office or relaxing on the beaches in a small seaside town, you can trade in the markets as long as you’re connected to the world.
Veteran stock investors would term today’s stock market investment as a ‘cakewalk’ for sure. Naturally, there are people who have made a career of learning how to invest in the stock market.
If you have enjoyed initial success with stock trading you might be pondering the question – can online stock trading be your work-at-home career? Or, in other words, can you make a comfortable living from share market trading?
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Why The Urge To Make Online Stock Trading A Career?
Before we delve further into whether you can make a career in stock trading let us first understand the urge behind people giving this a serious thought.
The biggest lure behind this is a word that has led humans to always break barriers and do the impossible, and that word, without doubt, is ‘FREEDOM’.
The number of people who wish to break free from the monotonous 9 to 5; from a boss who never seems to appreciate them, and from all the stress and strain that your day job brings is humongous.
Are these good enough reasons for you to quit your job and try becoming a full-time stock trader or day trader? If you ask people who offer courses in online stock trading for beginners, they’d say ‘No’.
Confused? Read our next argument.
Most People Lose Money In The Stock Market
If your rationale for wanting to become a stock trader is just to break free from the stress that you’re dealing with in your daily job, stock market trading isn’t for you. There are less risky ways to make money.
You could try your hand at investing in mutual funds, real estate, or precious metals. You could launch a start-up instead or write blogs on why everyone should quit their jobs (ad revenues are high for such blogs by the way).
To disappoint you a bit more, research shows that a majority of people who try to learn how to trade in the share market lose money rather than make anything.
You may have enjoyed initial success when trading casually or have minted millions in mock trading apps, but the odds of you blowing up your accounts is high let alone earning handsomely to put bread on your table or enjoy vacations in exotic locales.
The fact is day trading, which is different from position trading (which is what you may have done till now) is a different ball game. If you don’t yet know what day trading it means you need to join a course on online stock trading for beginners.
Coming back to our argument, trading daily in the market or rather turning day trading into a career is more than just knowing stock trading basics. It requires serious levels of excellence and an understanding of trading strategies.
From understanding the technicalities in the market to being able to decipher information from the signals that you get from all around, you have to rise above the ordinary.
It’s what separates those who run a marathon for fun sake and those who win races around the world. You need to transition from being an amateur learning stock trading for beginners to a professional day trader.
This begs another question – have people who have studied stock market basics and started day trading made money and turned it into a career? Yes, a sizable section of traders has done well after quitting their jobs.
But they didn’t do it to achieve freedom. They got into day trading after building a sizable level of skill in trading and their ability to separate the good from the bad when it comes to stock trading.
Losses in day trades are as common as spotting a Ferrari drive past you in LA! What seasoned traders do better than others is gain more than they lose.
Can You Start A Day Trading Career From Home?
Should you give up the idea of making a work-at-home career in online share trading or stock trading? We never said that.
All that we have reasoned so far is that day trading comes with its own risks and merely taking to it in order to break free from a job you don’t like isn’t the right motivation.
If you have developed a passion for stock trading and the volatility in the market excites you more than it scares you, you are probably the right person for this career.
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Day Trading For Beginners: 3 Steps To Success
If you’ve decided to turn day trading into a work-at-home career, there are a few things you need to do to ensure this decision doesn’t backfire or you’ll start hunting for a job sooner than you expect.
Day trading is all about speculation and you need to keep in mind that the risk of losing your wealth remains high. So here are some of the things you need to do.
1. Learn To Trade With Stock Trading Courses
You may not have taken a course on online stock trading for beginners so far, but if you’re planning to turn it into a career, you’ll have to learn how to trade stocks.
If you want to learn to trade online, you can join an online trading academy that offers online trading courses on share market basics for beginners.
Most of these share market tutorials and day trading courses go into stock market fundamentals and technical factors that govern market movements, especially with equities that you are planning to trade.
To learn to day trade you have to start with courses on how to invest in the stock market for beginners. Just search for “day trading classes near me” or “stock market classes near me” and you’ll find a large number of options for stock market training for beginners.
You can also attend share market classes on share trading basics in your neighborhood, or even learn the basics of trading online with stock trading courses.
Once you have learned share market basics, opened an online trading account, learned how to use day trading software and trading platforms, and polished your day trading skills you’ll graduate to being a day trader.
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2. Make A Gradual Shift To Your Day Trading Career
You can’t wake up one day and say, “Eureka, I’m a full-time stock trader!” Remember the odds of failure are way too high.
You can learn how to trade stocks with courses in stock market trading for beginners, but doing share market courses is like reading a book on swimming. Until you jump into the pool and learn how to stay afloat, you can’t call yourself a swimmer.
Make a gradual entry into this career first from the point of view of a casual stock market investor to an active day trader and then into a full-time stock trader.
You’ll learn from your mistakes in the early phase and, to ensure these mistakes are small, you need to make a gradual entry into the market.
3. Treat Day Trading As a Regular Job
If you thought you’ll enjoy ‘freedom’ from the regular 9 to 5 by becoming a stock trader, you’re wrong.
Stock markets generally remain open for 7 to 8 hours a day and you’ll have to stay alert and keep your eyes open, at least during market hours, if you’re serious about day trading.
Plus the research that you need to do after the market closes and before the market opens and working out your trading strategies will take up most of your time. So if you have ‘freedom’ in mind day trading may not be your cup of tea.
To sum up, stock market trading as a work-at-home career option isn’t for everyone. It requires you to build the right skills and have an analytical bent of mind.
But if you learn how to make a living trading stock and succeed at your day trader job, you’re very likely to accumulate the kind of wealth most people only dream about.
Disclaimer: All investments, including real estate, are speculative in nature and involve a substantial risk of loss. The ideas and strategies on this website are based on personal opinions. They do not and should not be considered as professional financial investment advice and should never be used without first assessing your own personal and financial situation, or without consulting your professional investment advisor. We advise you to do your due diligence before acting on any information that we publish and do not, in any way, warrant or guarantee the success of any action you take in reliance on our statements or recommendations.
About The Author:
Mark Root is an ace investor who has been into stock market trading for many years and also runs courses on online stock trading for beginners. He keeps an eye on the most popular trading strategies and writes about them regularly.
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