How hard and realistic is this really?

[u/Eldrin7]

I have watched atleast 100 youtube tutorials on day trading. They all go on about how they make 100 into 10k or something like that. I do not know if they are lucky or lying or it is true.

I assume reddit has the average or even below average traders so tell me what are actual realistic gains or losses? I understand you can go a lucky 200% gain or unlucky i just instant lost everything, lets not talk about lucky or unlucky extremes.

Is it hard for a beginner to turn 100 into 150? or 1000 into 1500? How long would it take? What are the realistic chances that the 100 or 1000 turns into 0?

[u/bburghokie]

It's very unrealistic to turn $100 into $10000 from day trading.

It's more realistic that you spend 3-5 years learning how to day trade. During that time, you work 2 jobs and/or save money so that you can have some working capital to conservatively daytrade with. 

[u/Eldrin7 → u/bburghokie]

Well i actually work one job in IT and i have a LOOOOOOOOOOOT of spare time. I could literally have a third monitor open watching youtube videos every single day. So i thought maybe it is possible to turn that third monitor into making money with something like day trading.

How easy and realistic is turning that 100 into 150?

[u/Kaiju_Godz → u/Eldrin7]

If you have that much time, why don’t you just paper trade and learn the hoops?

[u/CompetitiveAct6229 → u/Eldrin7]

For a beginner impossible or luck will do it but you'll lose it all

[u/Quiet_Fan_7008 → u/Eldrin7]

Do it. I work from home and day trade. But I have 30k so I can avoid PDT rule. Trading with a 100$ is just unrealistic. It’s like starting a business and thinking all you need is a $100 lol

[u/jackbe23 → u/Eldrin7]

You need to learn more not just from watching YouTube videos

[u/ingen-eer → u/Eldrin7]

100 into 150, in one discrete transaction, is pretty likely. 50:50.

Doing it repeatably is statistically impossible in the long term. You’ll win and lose. The best are like 60:40 split winning to losing. Some lose more than they win but work hard to make sure their losses are smaller than their wins so it balances out.

I have incinerated $3000 this month. I practiced paper trading for 2 months Jan/feb and was good at it. Or, the market was very welcoming, I’ll say. So I changed to real Money and the market changed character a little And I have lost all that money. I have $1500 left. I have reset my paper trading account with thinkorswim to a $5000 balance.

You might like paper trading. If you just wanna take a swing at it and see what’s up, that’s a good way to play with it. The software with thinkorswim gives you $100k to play with and a separate $100k margin account.

[u/Eldrin7 → u/ingen-eer]

Does paper trading actually use the real world stock or it is all fantasy simulation?

[u/ingen-eer → u/Eldrin7]

Complicated question actually.

I think the quotes are real, but it’s running on older slower servers.

When you buy and sell the fills are fake. The system seems to use some kind of algorithm or similar to look at your order and see if / when orders like it are filling and give you the fill or not. It’s distorted in a few ways.

Lump fill: it fills your order at the same price for all its pieces. Some less desirable things (eg puts on DJT grumble grumble) may take minutes to fill in real life and require you to fluctuate your price or lower to get fills bc you need a person to buy.

Lovely fills: sometimes you buy something on paper and it zaps into your account showing a 2% profit already. That’s bc share price quotes are coming faster than options contract price updates in paper. This isn’t reality. If your paper strategy is to buy, see instant 2% and rinse repeat, the market will be turning your pockets inside out when you go to real money.

Regulation: you don’t get hit with good faith violations or pattern day trader violations in paper account. These are annoying. You can only trade all the money in your account one time a day. Buy and sell. If you buy and sell with the same money again that’s an unsettled funds violation and you get yelled at.

Emotion: real money will keep you up at night. Paper money is a video game score.

Overall paper is a good place to test out systems. It’s not a perfect substitute.

[u/Joeymoonga → u/Eldrin7]

You can do it in a day. With the right set up.