Has anyone thought about quitting their job and day trade stocks instead?

[Siddhartha]

Originally posted by: TranceNation
I've been trading stocks for 4-5 years now and currently thinking about just doing that now. I figure I would need to make about $200 per day to be equal to my job and that should be quite doable for me. So has anybody else thought of this?

Start saving some cash and go for it.

 

[stev0]

if you have money, it can be done.

most of the day traders these days are in with large amounts of stocked purchased and small gains. $100,000 would get you started nicely. you would probably want to get specific programs just for this sort of thing, like Reuters Bridgestation and Preferred Trade, both of which cost size to run every month.

 

[CrazyDe1]

My dad does this. However it's not out of choice, he lost his job. He's grown my Roth IRA from 2000 to about 10,000 and my sisters 1000 to about 16,000. My Roth IRA took like 4 years, my sisters money took like 6. He bought 10,000 shares of Sonus Networks at 20 cents a share and told me today it's at like 6 dollars. Don't get me wrong, he has his bad days where he loses a couple grand a day but I hear more good days than bad days and I think he's way ahead. The funny thing is our TV is always on the stock channel so I see how he does compared to what the market does. It seems like when the market is way up like 100 points or more I ask him how he does and he's always like my sh1t didn't go up. But when it's down or barely up he seems to make huge gains. To each his own. If it were me I'd keep my job

 

[Harabecw]

Originally posted by: Shantanu
Yeah, but at least the person who is flipping burgers is adding some value to society.

No, it doesn't add value to society, it adds fat.

 

[kt]

You can do eeet!

 

[shootsfor3]

Originally posted by: gopunk

Originally posted by: shootsfor3

Originally posted by: gopunk

Originally posted by: Howard
My dad's done it. He pulls in about $150 USD a day, on average. This is when he doesn't do contracting. One of his friends (a whole bunch of his friends day trade with him) can get anywhere from $150-400 a day.

how much is he investing? because if he's putting in a million, then sure, i believe you.

It's day trading , not investing. Buy the stock and sell 1 minute later perhaps. Maybe sometimes hold a position for 30 minutes or an hour. It doesn't take $1,000,000 worth of capital to make $400/day trading stocks intra-day b/c for example 1000 shares of a $40 stock is what? $40,000. If he make 40 cents, that's $400 b4 commission. Need around at least $100K to daytrade. But there are many other factors, such as how many positions he trades at once.

day trading, investing, lets not get into semantics. you must have misunderstood; i never said i wouldn't believe him if it was less than a million, that was just an example of a figure i could believe.

I'm glad u cleared that up, but u still don't understand what daytrading is all about. It doesn't have to even come close to a million.

 

[Hector13]

Originally posted by: Shantanu
Yeah, but at least the person who is flipping burgers is adding some value to society. WTF does day trading do?

That, and on average day traders make damn sh|tty money.

day traders can add some "value" to society. "Swing" traders add liquidity to the markets (though "momentum" traders probably take some liquidity away).

Also, it is always better for everyone to have more "uninformed" traders in the market place.

 

[Double Trouble]

There's nothing wrong with daytrading per se, but over the long haul it's generally a losing proposition. With the equity markets being at least semi-strong-form-efficient in nature, it is unlikely that anyone could consistently beat the average market return in the long run. Add to that that you have to pay commissions on trades and that there's an opportunity cost involved, and the fact that you are assuming a substantial portion of risk, and I'd say daytrading is a very iffy proposition.

Can it be done? Sure, there are people making money from it. Still, the vast majority of daytraders (there were a lot of them when the market was booming a few years ago) have gone under or stopped daytrading.......

 

[FeathersMcGraw]

At least at the casino you can get blinking lights and free drinks.

 

[ReiAyanami]

anybody remember about two years ago some daytrader in atlanta walked into the day trading firm he went to and killed 13 ppl with a pair of glocks before killing himself

if you are one that angers easily or cannot afford to lose your life savings then don't day trade

 

[Thegonagle]

How about you keep your job and invest your salary wisely. Then you'll be virtually guaranteed to exceed that $200 a day mark.

 

[jjones]

I did this for a period of almost a year. Not daytrading exactly because some stocks I would hold up to a couple of weeks; on average I probably held a stock for 2 days or less. I cleared after commissions more than 6k a month with starting capital of just over 50k. This was back in the mid 90's though and I can't say I would do the same now. Actually, I wouldn't. But if you feel you'd like to go for it, be my guest. It was fun for me for awhile but then other things came up that took away my time and I got out of it.

I'll tell you one thing, it sure was fun (always a rush), and it beat the hell out of any 9 - 5. Don't think I could handle it long term though.

 

[brunswickite]

i think about quiting my day job and joining a traveling circus.

 

[Encryptic]

Originally posted by: TranceNation
I've been trading stocks for 4-5 years now and currently thinking about just doing that now. I figure I would need to make about $200 per day to be equal to my job and that should be quite doable for me. So has anybody else thought of this?

I thought about it for 5 seconds while watching an infomercial for some guy's "Trend Trading" program at 5:30 AM one morning.

 

[shootsfor3]

Like many of them, that infomercial was definitely bootleg.

 

[gopunk]

Originally posted by: shootsfor3

Originally posted by: gopunk

Originally posted by: shootsfor3

Originally posted by: gopunk

Originally posted by: Howard
My dad's done it. He pulls in about $150 USD a day, on average. This is when he doesn't do contracting. One of his friends (a whole bunch of his friends day trade with him) can get anywhere from $150-400 a day.

how much is he investing? because if he's putting in a million, then sure, i believe you.

It's day trading , not investing. Buy the stock and sell 1 minute later perhaps. Maybe sometimes hold a position for 30 minutes or an hour. It doesn't take $1,000,000 worth of capital to make $400/day trading stocks intra-day b/c for example 1000 shares of a $40 stock is what? $40,000. If he make 40 cents, that's $400 b4 commission. Need around at least $100K to daytrade. But there are many other factors, such as how many positions he trades at once.

day trading, investing, lets not get into semantics. you must have misunderstood; i never said i wouldn't believe him if it was less than a million, that was just an example of a figure i could believe.

I'm glad u cleared that up, but u still don't understand what daytrading is all about. It doesn't have to even come close to a million.

i don't recall i ever said it did... apparently i didn't clear it up.

 

[shootsfor3]

apparently not

"how much is he investing? because if he's putting in a million, then sure, i believe you"

If you start with the figure a million for you to believe him, why would you believe him if it was less than a million.

 

[JEDI]

buy low, sell high

or if shorting (wouldnt recommend it in the current bull environment), buy high+ sell low

 

[Hector13]

Originally posted by: JEDI
buy low, sell high

or if shorting (wouldnt recommend it in the current bull environment), buy high+ sell low

?
if you are shorting, you still want to buy low and sell high; you just do them in the reverse order (ie, sell first then buy)

 

[rocadelpunk]

haha i hope you took econ sometime during school?

even if you were sucessful at daytrading (highly unlikley)

...does your job have health care, benefits?

If you want my opinion, a good investment would be going back to school and getting a better/higher level degree

but i'm just a 18yr old, what do i know : \

 

[Miramonti]

I quit my job almost 5 years ago to be a daytrader, when I started making more trading during the job than the job itself.

I never looked back, easily the best decision I ever made and won't be quitting anytime soon.

I should add a qualifier that I was a professional floor trader previously, which helped to understand the markets and the way they trade, altho never traded stocks before.

 

[LordMorpheus]

No. I will tell you why.

Stock traders produce nothing for society. Nothing of value. At best, they can help companies that are on the upswing (by buying their stock, thus giving the company more $$ to work with) and at worst, the can turn a slight dip of a compnay into an all out failure.

I would rather live a meaningful existance.

 

[RobCur]

I heard that tom and jerry got rich day trading 24hrs a day, the best damn decision they ever made and you know, the only effort is pushing buy and sell button on their computer screen. LMAO!!!

 

[CrazyDe1]

Originally posted by: LordMorpheus
No. I will tell you why.

Stock traders produce nothing for society. Nothing of value. At best, they can help companies that are on the upswing (by buying their stock, thus giving the company more $$ to work with) and at worst, the can turn a slight dip of a compnay into an all out failure.

I would rather live a meaningful existance.

"Meaningful." What the hell do you define as meaningful? You'd rather take a job being a janitor because it's meaningful and you're doing something beneficial for society? Cleaning up after people's messes is a meaningful existance? To me a meaningful existance would be to how enough money to live comfortable and also be doing something I find fun and interesting. To tell you the truth, I think I'd find life more "meaningful" if I was day trading rather than doing this software engineering bullsh1t. Hell, by writing software for a defense contractor I don't think I'm doing anything meaningful either. In fact, I'm helping create software to harm other people.

 

[sciencetoy]

Don't listen to the idiots who don't know anything about daytrading.

Yes, you can make money doing it. As you know, it's very intense and you can never really take a vacation or day off or anything because you're always thinking "what if this is the moment that an awesome situation comes up and SH*T I might miss it". If you can deal with that intensity then good for you, go for it.

Okay, the climate could change and daytrading become less profitable. Well duh, that could happen in any industry - I think a few of us here work with "computers"?? That industry has changed a sh*tload in the 20 years I've been in it, and is going to change a lot more. (Also, the climate could change and daytrading become MORE profitable.)

Like any other business you are in for yourself, you have to consider overhead, expenses, benefits and so on. If the numbers are there then go ahead.

I tried trading for awhile but wasn't tempermentally suited (I kept wanting to reprogram the software and try to figure out what the algorithms are, etc). A lot of the guys from my training group are still doing it (about 6 years) and a couple of them make really really big bucks. They work for it, though.