new to this portal. the first thread i read is this and i was struggling with same question last year. when i read the response from cabin111 i couldn't agree more. my 2 cents: read a book "winning with dow's losers" and then go to https://dowunderdogs.horizonpublishing.com/pricechange.aspx .... idea is to find quality stocks that you believe are good companies but broken stocks, i did avoid Intel, Disney and VZ but I made good money on Boeing, CRM, AXP, JPM. strategy is simple. buy stocks that are down 20-30-40%, sell covered calls monthly, 45 day etc. go to trading view and wait for daily/weekly/monthly RSI on that stock to be above 40. this will test your patience. simple but difficult rules to follow - ride the momentum, cut your loss fast , add to the winners. FYI - i am a long term investor and my goal is to earn 12-18% yearly. hope this helps.
Trading with funds less than 25k is like playing a game with hands tied(PDT rules). 125k level which is where you get portfolio margin is also not that different. Once you have 1 million or even 500k, you will experience that freedom to short any option or any underlying. Now, the biggest fear is the fear of losing that capital. Stop loss kind of trading is not for someone at this level. Risk free trades selling options with secured cash, even if the reward is only 5% a year will seem ok. If you persist with this thinking, you will learn you can use the same margin to increase the returns to 10% or even 20% or more. That’s when you are free. If you can borrow at 10% margin rate and can make 15% return on a trade with virtually no risk, you can begin to create money out of thin air.