When you start out as a day trader, you have to realize how much education you need to attain. Not in terms of fancy degrees, but in terms of screen time in the market, learning how to spot trends and figure out which stocks are winners. The way that you become a better day trader is by learning from veteran traders and then going out there and trading every day. That means that you are going to make real decisions each day, like how to make do without a 401K.
A 401K is a great way to save money for retirement. If you are with a company that offers one, it is a great, no-hassle method for putting aside portions of your paycheck without thinking about it. And if you are part of a company that matches 401K funds that is the best. However, that means you have to have a boss, pointless deadlines, soul-sucking commutes every day, co-workers who cannot get out of their own way and a whole bunch of customers looking to blame you for a big organization’s failures.
So day trading is a great way to bypass a 401K and move on to financial independence. You can start by learning gap & go trading, a momentum day trading strategy that allows you to search for stocks that are trending or gapping up in the morning, higher than the price they were at the day before. If you can find all the indicators that make it a potentially profitable gapper, that means that you can make a move. Then you try to ride that gapper all the way to a win and bank those profits for the rest of the week.
Every day you hunt for volatility and strive to be profitable. Then, if you can be profitable every day, making $200 a day that means you can get yourself to a salary of $52,000 per year. That will bring you beyond the typical corporate job and out of the world of mandatory employee forums and a 401K plan that will not bring you riches. You get to make your own way and be your own boss.
Imagine being in front of 3 monitors, watching the market move from bull to bear and making money on trades that you see and you can make happen. The control is all yours. You can make your own hours and decide when to break for lunch. You get to go to the bathroom whenever you want and move from the desk to the window whenever you want. You don’t have to wait for the IT department to release your computer from the restricted intranet. You get to decide what websites you can visit. No one can tell you what to do.
So that gives you a bunch of responsibility. And it means you need to get good at risk management. Once you learn how to manage the risk and keep your trades from losing too much each month that means you can take control of your income and your life. Day trading gives you the means to make your life what you want.
