Say what? I’m becoming a Day Trader and quitting my job? No, not so fast now. I guess you can say the title is a bit misleading.

No, I’m not quitting my day job and throwing all my savings into Gamestop, YOLO! But I am very interested in day trading or rather swing trading.

I guess you can call this my commitment post where I will attempt to keep myself accountable by putting my goal out into the world as I start my life as a swing trader.

How It Started

I’ve had some good fortune with investing over the last few years since I started my professional career. Of course this comes with the caveat that I’ve only ever experienced a bull market since I started investing.

I’ve also had some luck with swing trading which is the middle ground between day trading and long-term investing. In fact, my first stint into swing trading using Robinhood was a success in my book where I made a 31% return on my investment in my first year.

While I’ve since learned my lesson, which is that I need even more lessons before I can dive into investing any further, it was a defining moment that led me to reconsider my strategy on aggressive student loan repayment, leading me to debate the merits of investing vs paying off debt.

It was because of this that I eventually changed my outlook from solely focusing on debt repayment to actually start investing in my 401k and Roth IRA three years ago.

I remember thinking when I started investing that there were many things to be learned. The idea that stocks could have patterns that could be interpreted was fascinating. But along the way, I drifted off and didn’t further my education. 

I discovered 401k, Roth IRA, and index funds which rightfully became priorities over swing trading individual stocks. So I focused my attention on maxing out my 401k and Roth IRA. And with my student loans still at a high amount, I didn’t want to risk what little I had leftover on day trading rather than paying off my loans. 

It was a sound decision then and I still believe it was a sound decision now. By investing in index funds, I successfully built a 6-figure portfolio. And by continuing to aggressively pay down my debt, I saw myself out of 6-figure debt and now under $50k debt.

I just wished I had continued my education rather than stop all learning when I decided not to move forward with swing/day trading.

Why Now?

So, why did I suddenly decide, 3 years after I stopped swing trading to start again? Well a coworker of mine (one of my two work besties) told us she was buying a day trading course and offered to go three-way. The course was $5000! Not ready to dive into something so expensive, I and my other co-worker declined. But it definitely re-sparked my interest. 

So, while I’m not ready to dish out thousands of dollars on a course, I am confident that in this day and age, resources are out there. I’m starting with the free resources available at TD Ameritrade which are awesome (and as a disclaimer, I am not associated with TD Ameritrade, so this is all my personal opinion).

So far I’ve completed two of their courses (a total of 7 hours worth of learning) and even if nothing comes from it and no money is to be made, the education I received from it is still worth it.

So why now? Well, as they say the best time to start investing was yesterday, the next best time is now. 

And a more pressing reason is that I am hoping to make extra money, especially once I buy my home and have to start making a mortgage. I’d love to have some extra cash.

Third, I just have some free time. Work has slowed down a bit and I’m hoping to take advantage of this time when I still get to work from home to be able to open my personal laptop and monitor the market while working my day job.

Lastly, I mean have you seen all those YouTube videos of day traders raking in thousands of dollars from one trade? Not going to lie, that sounds really good too.

Of course I’m cautiously optimistic. If day trading is such an easy moneymaker, everyone would be doing it right? So, no, I’m not under the delusion that I’ll start trading tomorrow and bring $10k per day and quit my day job the next day.

But I am optimistic enough that with practice, I may be able to learn some tricks of the trade, become better at recognizing patterns in the market, and be able to utilize a sound analysis to bring in some extra money.

Goal

Right now I’m utilizing the thinkorswim platform offered by TD Ameritrade which allows for paper money trading aka simulated trading instead of using real money to learn and gauge whether I am making the correct analysis and recognizing trends and patterns correctly.

Since there’s no real money currently at stake, I foresee myself losing focus or interest hence why I am making this post to remind myself to keep going.

While serious day traders wake up hours before the market open and start analyzing the pre-market conditions, I am going to take this slow and steady to avoid burnout. So my goal at least for April is just to log in everyday to thinkorswim and analyze my watch list, make some paper money trades, continue to improve, and reassess my goals come May.