Trader Upgrade

You've probably heard of Robinhood if you've been thinking about investing. Robinhood is one of the most popular zero-commission stock brokers available and is available on Apple and Android devices as well as on desktop.  More some investors, Robinhood is a great broker, but for more experienced traders, it may not be. Here are some pro's and cons to give you an idea if Robinhood is for you:  Pros:  $0 Commissions: No Fees $0 Account Minimum: Most brokers have minimums of a few hundred or thousand dollars. Mobile App : Much better-looking than most brokers' mobile app Stocks, Options, and even Cryptocurrencies available Beginner Friendly : Very easy to use and the zero-fee system allows you to trade small. Cons:  Customer Support : Email only. They don't have a phone call option Charts are Very Basic : Not a huge problem since you can use other charting platforms and use Robinhood for your orders. *Not Friendly for Highly-Active Traders...

There are a lot of Beginner Stock Trading tips out there that may help or may not, but in the end, the best thing you can do to become a better trader is to simply immerse yourself in it. This may not be the tip you were hoping to get, but it is the one you need. Many people want a get-rich-quick scheme but to become a successful trader, you have to get that out of your head and really be willing to put in the time and hard work required. You Must Build Intuition   If you ask successful traders how they know a stock was about to move a certain way, they may give you certain hard metrics like price movement or volume, but many will agree that most of it boils down to "having a feel for the market" . What does this mean? Well, it certainly doesn't have to do with how "smart" someone is or what their IQ is. It simply is the intuition built over time from watching the markets over and over again. Just like listening to a song over and over again; the firs...

In this post, I'll talk about what you can expect when becoming a Day Trader. I also have some other posts with Day Trading Tips and Day Trader FAQ's if you'd like to look around my blog, Trader Upgrade . I'll do a basic overview of the most important aspects of a Day Trader, which should help you decide if Day Trading is the career for you. Salary  The salary of a Day Trader varies tremendously and can realistically be anywhere from $0 to several Millions of dollars . It is a very entrepreneurial job, so you "eat what you kill" in a way. If you become an independent Day Trader, your salary may actually be negative. Working at an investment firm or prop trading firm, you usually take a percentage of your profits, using their capital to trade, which can range from 20% to 90% depending on many factors like credibility and experience. You usually don't have to pay for losses if you never become profitable but that would likely end in termination of ...

We've all been there . You enter a trade, confident that you're about to become a little richer. You're thinking in your head how much you're about to bank on this trade and the stock instantly drops... You're PnL moves as much as you predicted, but in the negative. At this point, you're frozen and don't know if you should get out of this stock or wait and hope it comes back up. Although, the first choice isn't an option, since you're body is physically not responding; much like your old computer back in the day running Windows 98 every time you try... well every time you try doing anything on it. You watch and hope, while your loss slowly grows bigger and bigger until you can finally muster the energy to sell and stop the pain. At this point, this behemoth of a loss is staring you in the face as you contemplate quitting trading altogether and taking that sales job that your friends have been talking to you about. Well, there's good news. Th...

Implementation Intention Stock Trading is full of temptations and that can make it hard to stick to your trading plan. There are times where you see a stock running and you get in, not wanting to miss the action, only to see it top out and retrace, forcing you to get out for a loss. Sometimes you take a loss and quickly get back into a trade because you want to make your money back, which leads to an even bigger loss. Even the most elite traders make these mistakes and you can't rely on sheer willpower to make you disciplined. This is where Implementation Intention comes in. Implemetation Intention is the act of simply writing a detailed plan which projects your mental plan into a physical form. Is seems too simple to be true but it has been tested in several studies and results show that it can more than double your chances of following through with a plan. Its very simple to ignore your plan if you only have an idea of it. If you have it written down, staring at you, it c...

When you break down the stock market to its fundamental level, it really is just buyers and sellers pushing the stock up and down, respectively. There are moment when the buyers overwhelm the seller and the price spikes higher. And there are moments when sellers overwhelm the buyers and the price drops significantly. Wouldn't it be great if you knew when and where these events are going to happen? This is where Trading Psychology comes in! Technical Analysis   Technical analysis works because people believe it works. Its a bit of a paradox but it absolutely makes sense! If you think about it, when a stock reaches a support level and people think it will bounce up from that level, naturally, buyers will come in and drive the price up. You can see this happening in the green circle in the photo on the right. Once it breaks that support level and trades lower, traders now see that support level as resistance and sell at the level, pushing the price down, as you can see happ...

How Much Money Do I need to Start Trading?   $0. Yes you can trade for free, with a simulation account, but of course you won't make any money. If you do want to risk some real money you can technically start with as little as $1 with some brokers I'll talk about in the next question. With a simulation account, like I mentioned, you can trade with "fake money" aka paper trading, which is a good way to practice trading without risking any of your hard earned money.   Paper Trading There are several paper trading websites you can use to practice trading stocks for free. I recommend using TDAmeritrade's Thinkorswim system because they have a very clean layout and you can find many how-to videos on basics for using their application. Here is a link to get started: https://www.thinkorswim.com/t/index.html#!/pmregister Real Money Trading If you are thinking about getting started with real money, I'd recommend using a small account (under $1,000). Of...