Everyone wants to be a daytrader. Let me tell you the best days. You get in at 9:25am. You make the trade your system tells you to make at 9:30. And by 9:45, the trade is done, profitable, and you're done for the day: $1800 richer and happy about it. Even better are those stories of people who took $3000 off of their credit card and "18 months later I had $25,351,011.45 in the bank!!!" The first day I decided I was going to be a fulltime daytrader, on May 18, 2001, I was so excited I couldn't sleep at night. It was unbelievable to me how much money I was going to make.
But its all a lie to yourself. I still occasionally daytrade. And I've daytraded for other people. I've daytraded for hedge funds and for prop trading firms. Right before I started daytrading, an old-timer who had spent 40 years in the business told me, "Don't do it. Why do you want to be involved with those people." But I wanted to be "those people". I was one of them. I was a TRADER.
Don't do it: Here's why:
- Suicide. At some point you will feel suicidal. That doesn't mean you lost all of your money. You might just be having your worst week in 2 or 3 weeks. But for whatever reason you bought when you should've sold and that sent your head spinning and now you need to be talked off the ledge. I've talked many people off the ledge in the past 10 years and had to be talked off a few times myself. Its not a pleasant feeling. Why do that to yourself?
- You'll overeat. Why not? You just put on the trade and the second you did it went against you. So you put on more and it went against you some more. So now you are staring at it and you are feeling bad. Your body needs to feel good. Your body is very short-term in its thinking. Its saying, "you did something that made me feel bad so now I need a doughnut. I know that will balance the bad feeling so go do it. Hurry." So you eat a doughnut. The trade goes against you more. Screw it, you eat 5 more doughnuts. Six. Seven. I'm getting sick even writing this. Eight. Nine. And so on.
- Your eyes go bad. Imagine you have two screens in front of you and thousands of numbers and they are all blinking and changing from green to red to green. You're staring at these numbers for thousands of hours over the course of years. I can't read books close to me anymore. The letters all melt together and look like a kaleidoscope. I have to take my glasses off to read them. Although, is that so bad? Maybe I won't need glasses anymore eventually.
- Social life. Do you really think that losing $500,000 of your client's money in a day is going to make you a happy, chipper person when you go out with your friends that night. One person told me, "play with your kids. Kids always make you happy." What the hell? Do I really want to listen to a four year old jabber about something when I've got money on the line? Forget it.
- Blood pressure. When I have a trade go against me, I can sit there and feel the blood pumping through my entire body. I can feel my heartbeat. That might seem like a superpower but it isn't. If you hear every single pulse going all through your body then something very bad is happening.
- Nothing productive. My biggest regret in life is the hours I spent watching trades when I could've been making a website business or starting some other kind of business that could've actually been helpful to people. Like a doughnut store. Who am I helping by trying to snatch a few thousand dollars out of the market every day? If anything, its like I'm trying to pick someone's pocket – the unfortunate, overeating, suicidal, bastard on the other side of my trade.
- No career. When you sit there and trade every day you're not networking with friends or other professionals. You're not learning anything new about the world or business. Every second you sit there watching a trade you are removing yourself further and further from any notion of a career since daytrading is not a career. You are closer to being an inmate in a mental institution and not a functioning member of society that your kids can be proud of.
- Its impossible. I know some very good daytraders. In the long run it is possible to make money daytrading. But it's hard and it takes years to build the psychology. Every good daytrader I know suffers from all of the above. You have to be extremely humble, have no delusions of grandeur when it comes to your market opinions, take losses as quickly as possible, and not get discouraged. Alas, in the long run, I have none of these qualities. And neither do you.
Good post, spoken from someone that has been in the trenches. Even when you have a system to take away as much of the emotional rollcoaster as possible – it is still there. Systems can only take away the emotion from buying and selling. We still have to deal with the portfolio ups & downs. And man, it takes years to get smart enough to realize you’ll still always feel those.
Oh, and loved the pick pocket quote…so true.
ROFL…this is a fantastic piece..i can sympathize with the added weight….been there!
gotta say i don’t agree with anything in the post. i daytraded in the glory days of the last bull market in 2007 & the profits piled up. didn’t need options or going short, though i have since learned those are valuable tools in bear markets. daytrading is the ultimate challenge. it’s a game about winning & strategizing & taking what is there for the picking. it requires intense concentration, lots of research & desire. i guess- you either have the passion for the market, or you don’t. If you have the passion- you perfect your art. or maybe you just keep working, learning, trial by error. its great for people who like working for themselves, calling their own shots, accepting responsibility for gains/losses, & ultimate success or failure. gotta keep the negative self-talk to a minimum of course, & maybe keep healthier snacks than doughnuts at hand.
It is not true that day trading – or whatever other style of trading – is unproductive! Traders are the lifeblood of capitalism: no traders, no financial markets, no trillions of dollars of money available in the society for building business and improve our civilization and allocate capital in the best directions!
Hi, good post and I agree for some parts but not everything… I have spent 12 yeas in the corporate finance world and volontary quit 3 years to be a daytrader… I trade futures and small caps and I love it! It fits my personality ang I don’t have to loose my time in stupid meetings… but I must say that most people will loose money trading… 95% +. You have a nice website and you write smart articles . Cheers. Francois, Canada
@Mike Taylor, you have a great blog at taylortree.com. I enjoy reading it. And yes, you’re right. Systems mean nothing and the psychology takes years to develop.
@Pier, you might be right about it being the lifeblood. But I’m not sure who is doing the bleeding.
@Francois, I do agree that it beats doing a corporate job. Once you leave the corporate world and discover that most of the world doesn’t sit in conference rooms all day, you can never go back.
I was there, but learned that I can’t do it full time, so now I have a business and just put on some trades here and there, I run a business first, my Insurance agency and trade secondary, but I love it and hope I can do it for the rest of my life.
@David, thats the way I do it. When I see a trade where I feel there is an edge, I make it but now I focus more on other parts of my business.
HI, MY NAME IS ROGER AND I’M FROM THE BIG STATE OF TEXAS. I DID NOT WANT TO BE A DAYTRADER BUT IN 2007 I PUT MY ENTIRE LIFE SAVINGS OF 10,000 DOLLARS ON SIRIUS STOCK (NOT KNOWING NOTHING). TO SAY THE LEAST I LOST EVERYTHING ALMOST. INSTEAD OF HANGING ON LIKE I SHOULD OF I SOLD WHEN I SHOULD OF HELD. THAN I WENT AND HOCKED EVERTHING I OWNED INCLUDING MY MOM’S DOUBLEWIDE TRAILER HOUSE AND STARTED SHORTING SIRIUS STOCK. NOW MEL K. CEO OF SIRIUS HAS TURNED THE COMPANY AROUND AND THEY ARE MAKING HUGE PROFITS, AND I’M HOMELESS.
Francois said,
“but I must say that most people will loose money trading"¦ 95% +. You have a nice website and you write smart articles.”
Never a more true word spoken. Losing $$ is secondary, to THE second guess IMHO, YOU have the GUT,you KNOW how it will move.You KNOW you will win it.
And YOU do not make the trade.(for whatever reason).
Sure enough,it HITS, you were dead on, and lost a lot of $$$$$$$$,because for WHATEVER reason, you did not pull a trigger that the GUT said DO IT!.
To me,THOSE moments were worse than losing money.
Luckily I had some sanity,I set aside X dollars, said,win,draw,lose…….I QUIT when it’s gone.
It’s like Vegas,a beckoning siren.
Now when the HFT’s are running the screens in nano secs, and the Fed are pushing the Mkt,you realize, the Mkt (as we knew it) is GONE.
RodgerDoger- it’s stories like yours that give daytrading a bad rap!
Hey James…I found your article intriguing. You are a person I respect in the stock market. I just want to point this out regarding your daytrading article…..everything you say is basically true. However, it’s always been this way with daytrading. I never see an article against daytrading when the market is down…it’s only during the bull runs like we have had over the last 8 weeks that I see anti-daytrading articles.
I think it’s important to point out that yes, likely 90% of daytraders or active traders fail. However, I would like to also point out that the same is true for buy and holders….most of them anyway. I don’t know many successfull investors either. Or at least those that are honest about it.
If you are a trader either you gotta love it or you gotta leave it. I love my job….look forward to it everyday….& I trade whenever I feel like it. As a trader, I control my own destiny. I am my own boss. Not everyone can do it, because not many grasp the mental aspect or psychology that comes with loss.
Anyways, if someone daytrades, invests, or swing trades….good luck out there, because the market is not easy……ever. Only the really humble survive…and not many are humble in this business.
Welsh
@JohnWelsh, I agree with you. If you look over the past 50 years there’s basically been only two approaches that have consistently made money (in the millions or billions).
A) The Buffett/Gates approach of holding a concentrated portfolio (one company, for instance) forever. B) The complete opposite extreme. The Goldman Sachs approach of making thousands of trades at high frequency every second.
The 99.9% of the guys in the middle pretty consistently lose money.
Senor Rodger,why you no tell everybody you live in my basement after you lose your money with the daytrading? You no tell everybody the full story how I give you tacos from my store.
James, I’ve been reading and enjoying your writings for years. Good stuff and I hope you keep writing. With respect to this article, You raise some valid points but I don’t agree with you telling people not to try something they believe may bring them financial success. How different is trading from any other job that doesn’t guarantee a salary? Like a commissioned sales person or someone starting a new business. The majority of folks who go into Sales fail as well or burnout since they are only as good as their last sale or sales quarter. I’m also not talking only about low end no degree needed sales jobs but sales reps for global company’s as well. Many entrepreneur’s put years of effort into something to only fail miserably as well. These types of jobs are not for everyone but those that try and succeed reap huge satisfaction & rewards.
I worked in corp fortune 100 sales for most of my life and I trade now for a living as well and I can tell you that a lot of the problems that you mention that arise from daytrading happens in other lines of work as well. I know Sales & (ex-sales) people from big nasdaq traded company’s that are on anti-depressants or are overweight from stress eating. Many have no social lives or are divorced already simply because they are working 15 hour days trying to hit their goal for the qtr so they won’t get fired. I also know many programmers, Engs and Cube droids who complain of bad eyesight & weight gain from sitting in front of a computer all day long so these effects are not limited to daytraders.
Anyway, My point here is that if you want financial or working freedom (unless you were born into it) you will have to at some point take on risk. So I would never discourage people to at least try if they want. If you get your ass kicked picked yourself up shake off the dust and go do something else or go use what you learned & try again. It’s not tragic to have tried at something and failed but to have never tried certainly is.
Treat trading as any other busines. Have a business plan, keep track of your records, have a pic or video of your trades. Have week meetings to review. Have discipline and perseverance and do it. The only difference with other business is that you are by yourself 100%. Psicology is important ,needs to be part of your plan. Please do not justify failure with other reasons to say that trading is impossible .trading is challenging maybe respectfully is just not for you
Jesus. You act like day-trading and swing trading are completely different things. Get a grasp of scaling and sticking to your stops and anyone can become a trader. Day-trading, really, should only be a tool to your swing-trading. Day-trading brings pennies whereas swing-trading brings the big monies.
If at this point you are still nail-biting over your trades, it’s time to get ahold of some trader’s psychology books. Get yourself together man. And that hair.
Sorry, but the entire article reads like someone who has blown up their account, and wants to make sure no-one else even tries.
All the reasons that you list read like the litany of someone trading without a defined edge, no real money management and using pure emotion to enter and exit trades.
I don’t buy the ‘portfolio swings’ argument either. If your edge works, what do you care about a lousy loss? If you know your profit to loss ratio is covering it, who cares? (You did test your method, right?)
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