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A big chunk of my professional career has been spent in the online marketing world. A world, as with day trading, many are drawn to by the promise of making fast, easy money.
There’s no shortage of self proclaimed gurus peddling Internet marketing courses, conferences, exclusive mentorship programs and the like who make bold promises about sharing their amazing secrets of raking in boatloads of cash online.
They’ll tempt you with their amazing stories of success. Screen shots galore of the “proof” of all the money they’ve made. Testimonials out the wazoo. Websites and ads plastered with them and photos of fancy cars, private jets, hot chicks, and the exotic locales they work from.
It’s all very compelling and, I’m embarrassed to admit, I fell for my fair share over the years.
Problem was the fast, easy money these gurus promise almost never materializes.
As I got deeper into the marketing world, I actually got a peak behind the scenes of some of these self-proclaimed gurus and learned their dirty little secrets…
… The cars, mansions, jets and chicks were rented. And the exciting, money making strategies they were peddling worked, at best, for a handful of folks. But they didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell at working for most.
In fact, many really weren’t that successful using the tools and strategies they’re blabbing about. They’re just really good at packaging their BS and peddling it to the unsuspecting masses.
This online marketing cesspool reminds me a lot of what’s going on in the day trading world.
There’s so much buzz and hype about using day trading to make fast, easy money. You can’t throw a rock online without hitting some guru day trader pitching their latest course or strategy.
4 Dirty Little Truths About Day Trading
1. The VAST majority of day traders lose money over the long haul.
2. Day trading is a career choice just like any other career. Don’t expect to put in an hour a day and be successful.
3. It is NOT a get rich quick scheme. In fact, for most, it’s a get broke quick scheme.
4. Even with the most amazing trading software in the world, stock prices jump around during the course of a day for all sorts of reasons. Yes, there are charts and patterns you can use that can help, but predicting stock price movement over the short terms is a highly risky strategy.
5 Secrets of Successful Day Traders
There are definitely folks who are successful at day trading and rake in some good dough doing it. Here’s some truths about getting to that level…
1. Serious day traders will often spend up to 80 hours a week trading and/or gathering information (this ain’t a part time gig).
2. You can read books, watch YouTube videos, take courses and/or attend all the seminars you want til you’re blue in the face. But it takes doing REAL trading with REAL money consistently over time to be successful.
3. You have to develop consistent strategies/formulas that pay out more often than not, hone them over time and STICK to the strict trading rules you develop. Stray from them and give into emotion and you’re gonna get crushed.
4. It takes a tremendous amount of focus and self-discipline to be a successful day trader. Working on the psychological and emotional aspects of day trading are as important as your trading strategy.
5. Most truly successful day traders don’t have the time or interest to teach random folks on the Internet their secrets of success.
Yes, Day Trading Can Pay Out But…
Eventually I found some success in the Internet marketing world. But it didn’t look anything like all those hypey promotions promised.
It took many years of learning, applying and experimenting with a number of different strategies. Losing more real money than I care to admit. And fine tuning my BS detector to find the true gurus who actually knew what they were doing and were worth learning from.
The takeaway here is not that day trading it total BS and there’s no way you can make money from it. It’s that success, as with most things in life, will take a lot more time and effort than you expect. It’s up to you to decide if it’s worth it.
And if day trading isn’t for you, that’s totally fine. In fact, a LOT more investors are much more successful taking the long term approach to making money in the market. It takes way less effort on your part and the odds of success over the long term are much more in your favor than they are with day trading.
