The Truth About Day Trading Stocks: A Cautionary Tale About Hard Challenges and What It Takes To Succeed

CHAPTER 19

Trading for Skill versus Trading for Income

 

 

 

If you’re an amateur with no formal training, quit trying to go it alone. Quit day trading, right away. Review Chapter 16, “About Those Training Programs,” pick a class or mentorship setting that best fits your level of skill, and get yourself there yesterday.

But if you’re an amateur who’s already experienced some training or mentoring, then by all means, please read on. I’ll start with the most rueful, head-shaking confession that’s made by professional day traders. They confide that as beginners, when they’d finished a class, they immediately traded for primary income. After spending all their savings on that pricey seminar, they were gung-ho to immediately make those bucks back.

Does that sound like you? Is that what you’re doing? If so, then I repeat: don’t stop reading!

The truth is, your biggest investment in know-how is not the training programs. It’s the losses you’re going to incur while developing into a pro. I highlighted the scary truth in Chapter 12, “Why Some Traders Make More Mistakes.”

My goal in this chapter is not just to warn you, but to thoroughly and safely equip you. Here I show how you can minimize your post-graduate training fees—that is, your live-trading losses.

BUILDING A FOUNDATION OF TRADING SKILLS

For starters, you need to internalize this crucial, unshakable truth: as a greenhorn, you should be trading for skill. You should be focused on skill building, not money making. Trading for income ...