This is one dumb statement since we are talking about starting out. Please see my entry for today at www.xanga.com/studentwizard Here it is: I am trading as though I am running in a race with two stones tied to my legs. First, I cannot scale into stocks because I am defined as a pattern daytrader. That means, if and when my account drops down below 25K, I have no trades left. Means, I cannot scale in, nor take a small loss. I cannot scale in because if the intial position I take, drops a bit, that cuts into my 25K, and thus I cannot place a trade. I cannot take a small loss because that would be it for me for a while. Due to this, I overpaid for the stock, and was holding the bag and since I cannot trade/scale in, I didnât pay much attention. And when the huge announcement came, it filled my limit order just above the breakeven. If I had paid attention, if I was in the trading mode, I wouldâve been there to see it. I wouldâve been 8,000 dollars richer. All because of these ****** IB *ull*hit rules that they have. What sucks most, is being a pattern trader, and couldnât get my account under 25K and trade, NOT even ****ing place a trade and none of it is due to my fault. There is that thin line between success and failure and today was ****in it. THIS IS *** and TRIED OF THEIR ***. **M*. What a ****n moronic rules can these idiots come up with.
I think it is very hard for people to trade part time. I started as a full time trader on an exchange, and granted, not many people have that luxury. But, as my boss taught me, its just a matter of experience. Once you see it over and over again, you get the hang of it. Thats why putting in full days and watching stock movement will enable you to take advantage the next time you see it. Best of luck.
Yes you can learn to daytrade part-time, as long as you can trade 7.40-11.00. It's much more important to be adequately capitalized, i.e. $75000. Hell, I am a full-time daytrader and I work like 6-12 and 2-6, and I can easily stretch my midday break to 3 hours. You do need plenty of time to plan your day, review your trades, and study. As for silly analogies, my uncle went to law school at night and eventually became a very successful and respected attorney.
Between 1999 and 2004, I traded part-time while at work, but as a compromise I only traded mutual funds in tax deferred accounts. I did my research in the evenings and on weekends, and only needed to spend a short time at work each day monitoring the markets. During lunch I would listen to Bloomberg radio. Around 3:45 PM each afternoon I would access the internet for a few minutes and decide whether or not to trade that day and if so which trades to execute. By preparing for most scenarios over night and on weekends, I did not have to spend much time on my trade decisions. In rare cases, I would miss a desirable trade because of an unavoidable meeting at work or technology glitch. This allowed me to build my retirement and other tax deferred accounts to the mid 7-digit range. Because of the current trading restrictions on mutual funds, this strategy would not work as well today. But if you have access to ETF's or stocks in a retirement account, this is still a viable approach. Another option might be Rydex or Profunds, but I have found that their "slippage" is too high for my taste.
I don't think newbie traders or any other trader (experience) need to be trading fulltime to achieve success or make a living at trading. However, regardless if your part-time or full-time... We need to be studying and researching the markets fulltime regardless if we only trade 1 hour per day or 10 hours per day. Yet, not uncommon to see a newbie trader breath and live the markets 24hrs a day. Then as time pass (years)...we become more efficient in utilizing our trading time. Therefore the key becomes what we learn and how we use the info and not how many hours we put into the market each trading day. Further, I know several successful traders that the markets is just a 8am to 5pm job and it ends at 5pm. Just the same...I know a few other successful traders making a living in the market (same income as those doing it in 8am to 5pm) that only trade 1/2 trading days or only a few trading days per week... Yet these guys do have over +10 years in the markets. Efficient trading. NihabaAshi