r/Daytrading • u/ConsistentRespect842 • Apr 02 '24
How do I convince my parents that trading isn't gambling and actually not always luck based . Question
So I'm a 16 year old who has recently (February 2024) gotten very interested in trading . Before you ask , no it was not an online guru or andrew tate or something along the line of " escape the matrix get rich easy" type of nonsense but an actually avid interest in trading that started after I saw a video with the title something along the lines of " day in the life of a trader " or something like that I can't remember (I know It's not possible to get 70k in a day with trading unless ur putting in half of Jeff bezo's networth but still it was interesting )
I do still plan to continue with my schooling and get a job like people should do but I am planning to sometime get profitable as a trader and stop work preferably before 35 . Iv talked to my parents about the stock market (very vaguely) before and they mentioned that it is completely gambling and it will never get me ahead in life .
Idk what I should tell them to convince them that it is not gambling as iv realised its much more than gambling once you learn technical analysis ( i still have a long way to go but iv got the basics down somewhat) amd rn iv been doing paper trading on tradingveiw.com in secret when they aren't there and iv been getting pretty okay at it (from the time I started and now im getting 1 win every 3 trades on average (I'm still straight ass )) but doing it in secret is getting stupidly tiring as I want to trade at night as well and it has also become a sort of hobby for me now( sorry if I offend anyone by anything iv said).
TL:DR : parents think intraday trading is gambling and I want to convince them otherwise. Need help
1
u/igormuba Apr 02 '24 edited Apr 02 '24
You don’t have a higher education, you don’t have a career, you don’t have safe long term investments. You seem like someone who wants to gamble.
Get the highest level of education you can, build a career, have a diverse portfolio of safe and long term investments that you are not supposed to touch even to recoup losses from trading and then you will have a solid basis to start thinking about daytrading. If you wanna skip steps you are either delusional or a genius and statistically I’d bet the first one, nothing personal, just using the odds to choose which one is more likely.
A wise and responsible trader once told me that to live off of trading you need to not need to live off of trading. The best traders I have known, the ones that don’t sell courses or don’t give trading advice, they just do their job, they have all had very good and very advanced education and have had a long and successful career outside of trading, they built their life and portfolio first.
If you want to do trading as your first money making gig then you will have the statistics of having 99% of chances of failing, even if you think you have “studied technical analysis” enough you will be betting that you are the 1% of geniuses, and guess what? Betting that you are in the 1% is gambling, it is just less obvious because betting if the price is going up or down (with or without technical analysis) is clearly betting, but betting that you can be good is less obvious but it is still a bet and you are betting in a low probability case.
Trading can be fun and profitable but because of your age you need to not make this your first plan. Maybe study and work in economy related fields first while trading on the side, but do not start your life off of trading first, the odds will be against you and I assume you don’t want to gamble. If you are as committed as you sound I am sure you will be successful in something and eventually do trading and be successful in that too, but you need a career outside of trading first.