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I am 57 years old and completely burnt out on my working career after more than 30 years. Am recently divorced and have a net worth of $700,000. Social security at 62 will be approximately $2000 and if I wait until 67 it will be closer to $2800. No debt at all. Has anyone been successful at trading equities as an income replacement for the grind of the workplace? Any and all constructive advice appreciated.
I trade for a living as my main income source (no ss since I’m in my early 30s). You need to have a mixture of a permanent fund portfolio and then you can use say $200k to trade. However, if you are new to it, start with a lot lot lot less. You WILL make many mistakes. It takes a lot of practice to get good. There is a lot to learn. You have to build a solid concrete wall to control tour emotions.
IMO even if you have some day trading skills, day trading should be for those who have income (=source of capitals)(unless you are super savvy in trading and gain most of the time). If you don't have income, and just use your savings to do day trading, then you can see you retirement money diminish and lose all your savings. If you have income, even if you trade badly you'll still have money coming in.
I am not saying don't do it, but it would take some serious research into the market and trends, the economy, earnings, individual companies, etc. But if its something you're serious about, it can't hurt to put in the time and effort to study how things would work for you. I'd also consider playing with fake money games prior to investing real money, even after all of your research and study. And then, I would only invest a fraction of your net worth toward the endeavor.
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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several friends took severance from a fortune 50 and went to day-trading. ! 20% succeeded and the rest found other trading niches.
Most started out with ThinkorSwim + training (mostly free through Red Option Planet...) Then TD Ameritrade bought TorS... darn, another great brokerage bites the dust.
Now you can try Tasty Trade (ex-ToS executives) great live blogs and research... or interactive brokers,
Really depends on your skill set.
There are MUCH easier ways to make 15-20% doing frequent trading vs. true 'day-trading' (Highly competitive / playing with market makers (they know the business - you are their 'sitting-duck'. BOOM... Gotcha). )
They could be better. However, it's like this. You know in the horror movies, when the kids decide they're sick of being cooped up in the house while the monster is lurking and the decide to go through the dark tunnel on their way to a deserted shack because they want to retrieve a cherished teddy bear their sister dropped? You just want to yell at the screen and tell them....no you dolt...the monster will get you for sure?!?
That's most akin to what trying to start daytrading in the twilight of your career with the money you'll need to survive on is when you have no experience. There's a million reasons why it's an awful decision, but the summary is that it's an awful decision.
I trade for a living as my main income source (no ss since I’m in my early 30s). You need to have a mixture of a permanent fund portfolio and then you can use say $200k to trade. However, if you are new to it, start with a lot lot lot less. You WILL make many mistakes. It takes a lot of practice to get good. There is a lot to learn. You have to build a solid concrete wall to control tour emotions.
Control emotions, use a stop loss, if you stop out move on. Consider short term swing trading strategies and just focus on a few positions. Day trading for a few cents will not work.
Your first study guide...Weinsteins how to profit in bull and bear markets. Learn trends and chart setups, support and resistance levels. Risk management is the highest priority.
The problem with stop losses is you never know what price you will execute at with these fast moving market moves .
Many got burned bad by A bunch of popular etfs in one of the flash crashes we had ..DVY got pummeled and in seconds executed at down 35% while the assets it held were only down 5% ...it took a few minutes to align again but severe damage was done to those who had stop losses execute lower than expected
you realize that averages to only about 1 and 3/4 percent each month right?
.75% a month returns a little less than 10% in a year. 1% a month is a little more than 12.5% in a year so you would need just over 1.5% a month to get to the 20% mark. Do I understand the math? Yes I do and that doesn’t change my commentary
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