Everyone has a history, their own experiences on how they got to the point where they are right now. This is mine, this’s my day trading journey. Hope you enjoy it.
Since my early 20’s, I remember getting interested in investing in the stock market. Remember that I was always thinking how to become a day trade?.
Living in NYC helped fuel that interest more and more. I got interested in the life of a day trader. Went to lots of free seminars and got to know a bit more about what does a day trader do but was disheartened that I needed $25,000 to do it full time.
Then I read up on some interesting stocks and even jumped in several times. Each time I got involved a man would tell me what to do and then convince me that they can help me better than I can do it myself.
So somehow I would think that I’m taking control of my investments by giving over my hard-earned cash to them.
At one point I was so convinced by a financial manager that I didn’t even have to bother to sit down and talk out what I was investing in. This was during the tech boom back in early 2000 when everyone was making money! So I trusted them and went about my thing called life.
Fast forward several years, I am now married, with a child, and decided to check out my portfolio that was ‘managed’ for me. To my utter surprise, instead of getting the huge gains I was promised it was barely at 2% (less than inflation rate). When I looked at the fees I was spending on this ‘expert’ I was even more floored to find out it was 5%. So I was negative 3% when I should have been up up up.
This is when I came to the hard cold realization that no one cares about my money more than I will. And that’s when I knew it was time to take matters into my own hands.
With little knowledge, I set out to learn what I could. But the information for basic investing, how to start portfolios, retirement funds, college funds was hard to come by.
It was all men talking big words. Words that I have never heard of before, with big promises. I discovered is that the internet is flooded with courses and classes of all sorts and these ‘experts’ (men) would be happy to teach me either in a group setting, online or one on one coaching for anywhere between $5,000 to $25,000.
What???
I didn’t have that kind of cash to layout before even considering my own investments. As a matter of fact, $5,000 was ALL the money I had to invest period.
This was the point when I was ready to give up. I worked hard at telling myself my money is safe in the bank earning .02% or I can go a bit further and do a CD which was 2-3% depending on the length of time I wanted to keep it there.
No! I can do this, this is not the end of my day trading journey. I started reading everything that I found on the web. There is a ton of stuff out there, if you can sift through it. But you have to understand, interrupt it and then experiment. This would have been great if I could bounce my ideas and questions off people who were in similar boats.
The only forums out there were full of more men traders/investors. Who talked as they were trying to outdo one another in their gains, indicators, and other stuff that didn’t resonate with me, nor did it make much sense. And quite frankly I didn’t care about their new red Lamborghini.
I printed out pages and pages of info off the web, sat in libraries deciphering what it meant. Finally, I took my $5,000 and invested it. I broke it down to the different sectors businesses and areas I studied and wanted to invest in as a long term investor.
After investing and tinkering around for several years, I knew I wanted more. It was time to move on to the next step. Which was becoming a more involved investor. Here things got more serious on this day trading journey.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go in the direction of a swing investor. Someone who holds on to investments anywhere from one week to three months. Or a full inter-day trader which is only holding on to positions for one day and closing them all out before the 4 pm bell.
If I thought learning about basic investing was difficult, it was nothing compared to the gazillion course and classes that are on the market to make you rich quick.
I knew that even with all the self-education I did before it won’t make me the investor/trader I wanted to be. I knew I had to take a course. And once again, I was bumping into a male dominated industry. Where they pretend to welcome women with open arms but let’s face it, they loved playing the roles of the alpha male. And with no options, I was fine with it. But finding the right course to take was the hardest decision.
When you decide to be a trader you need to narrow your scope. It’s not at all like investing when you havelot of investments and can play with different positions, funds, and other markets. To be a successful trader you need to pick your poison and then stick to it.
The process is very investing, and once you become a trader, you can apply all that you learn to your longer term investments.
So before I was ready to commit to an expensive course I needed to figure out what was that one thing I will fall in love with and want to do every single day!
Stocks/ equities – I definitely considered this one. But with all the news, and insider trading it’s difficult to stay on the ball without some out-of-nowhere effect that can make your stock go up or down for no reason.
I love stocks. Stocks for me are long term investments, the dividend aristocrats, the companies I want to be a part of. They weren’t something I like to watch daily.
Penny Stocks – I have always had a love for penny stocks. These are stocks that are $5 and less. They are fun, innovative and can be exciting.
Options – this is more of a swing traders game, so I decided to not go into this too much
Futures – most people know this better as commodities and contracts. A lot of people trading this in Chicago, not with the rest of the players which are all in NYC (NYSE, NASDAQ, AMEX). It’s a lot riskier, but the rewards are thru the roof
FOREX – currencies. This is where you trade the value of one currency against another. The majority of the real trading takes place during night time, more on the Asian market’s time frame. You can definitely trade it during market hours, but it doesn’t depend on that at all.
I was this close to signing up with one of the best instructors for Penny Stocks. Until I discovered Futures and that’s when it all changed for me.
As much as I loved my course and have nothing but the outmost highest respect for my instructor. It was still very obvious that women were never considered to become good traders and they never fall into the ranks of their other students, even if we were better.
During my course, and ever since, I always find other women who are interested in investing from starting up portfolios, retirement funds, for putting together college funds for their kids, to trading full time. I wanted to connect to them, to share what I was going through and what they were going through.
With no community or information that is easy for women to digest and relate to. I decided it was time we started our own community!
Thanks for reading, this was my day trading journey.
