Misconception #1 – TOO RISKY WHO HAS $25,000 to GAMBLE WITH?

Ever since I can remember I’ve gravitated towards day trading. When I was in my early 20’s, living in NYC, I enrolled in as many adulted classes on how to day trade. During those classes I had a chance to talk to many other wanna-be traders.

End result – my brain was so polluted with a bunch of fears and misconceptions (of other newbies). It took me almost 15 years to heed my calling and cut through the bullshit and get serious. The two biggest myths and lies (misconceptions) you get are:

1. High Risk and Gambling

These must be the most popular of all. They are easy to fall back on especially when one doesn’t have any idea what day trading, as a profession, is all about.

The problem with day trading isn’t that it’s risky or a gamble, but that anybody with a bit of cash-in-hand can enter the market and pretend they too are day traders. Then these failed “traders”, with zero education and misleading views walk around telling the rest of the world how risky day trading is and how you can lose your entire life savings.

Of course what they are doing is risky!

It’s like me saying I want to be a doctor and head straight to the operating room with a scalpel and start operating on a patient. Chances of them dying is super high. If anyone was allowed to do that in the medical industry most of the population would be dead. Therefore we’d have no confidence in the ones that are true professionals.

And as far as gambling, it’s as much of a gamble for real day traders who have put in the time to truly learn their craft, as it is for doctors (I’ll stay with the medic analogy) who enter the operation room. Doctors still make mistakes, we hear about it all the time. But how many lives are saved and helped? Think of trading the same way. Doctors are updating their knowledge all the time to perform better, same for traders.

2. You MUST have at least $25,000 to open up a day trading account

This untruth has kept me from starting to trade for years and years and years. The very thought of having $25,000 in one account, not including if I want to take courses, overwhelmed me.

It made me think this was a rich-man’s game and I how can I ever enter to play.

But, as I said earlier, when your desire overrides the stories you get from uninformed people, you get a chance to cut through the bull and actually enter the playing field. Once you’re on the inside, not looking down from the bleachers the information is much different.

To open up a Futures Broker’s account you need $500 to start. All Futures accounts are purely intraday. If even 10% of all Futures traders hold their positions overnight or longer I’d say its super rare.

Ok, I won’t lie and imprint a new false belief that with $500 you can start your trading career, but that is all that is needed to open an account. As for how much you really need to start, I’d say $2000 is a good round figure. Only after you have spent plenty of time practicing with paper money and have a solid trading plan.