Doing CFA Level 2 or daytrading to make $500/day?

excellent comment, olivier!

First, $500 a day is not that much, any half decent compsci grad can make more doing, say, IT contracts (probably $800-$1000 a day) without risking their own capital. If you can consistently make $500 a day, you can probably get a job as a trader where you will be risking OTM (other people’s money) and making serious money, as Joey said. Why not do daytrading during the day and studying for CFA in the evenings?

I don’t know much about daytrading, but from what I do know, it’s less time-consuming than a job at a bank or b/d, which is what most of us on here do. No reason you can’t do both, assuming you can actually sustain a 6-figure income daytrading indefinitely. FourCastles Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > First, $500 a day is not that much, any half > decent compsci grad can make more doing, say, IT > contracts (probably $800-$1000 a day) without > risking their own capital. If you can consistently > make $500 a day, you can probably get a job as a > trader where you will be risking OTM (other > people’s money) and making serious money, as Joey > said. > > Why not do daytrading during the day and > studying for CFA in the evenings?

most people fail at day trading. the CFA program will probably not help the average finance worker excel at trading. day traders rarely use fundamentals. also, making $500/day guaranteed is great but it’s not true with day trading. did a recruiter for the day trading company say that you can earn $500/day? they’ll get a cut of every trade that you make so of course they’re gonna try to sell it to you. the fact is that most people fail at day trading because only a select few are good at it

Am I one of the few people who can make $500/day? I did failed before, but for now, I can make it for sure. I usually make more than that ammount within several hours. The biggest advantage to be a daytrader is the freedom and less time-consuming as brother bilo said. The biggest problem is to control yourself psychologically. Try not be too happy when you win and not be too sad when you lose. Today, I made another $500 already (before lunch).

I apologize if this isn’t your intent, but this thread contains repeated attempts to brag about your gains to others. With that said, as previously mentioned, you could be studying more appropriate material if you are trying to bolster your skills as a day trader.

Ohh boy now I want to learn about daytrading…how did you learn and what’s your advice?

Making $500/day isn’t that great. A lot of guys make more than that by doing more easy job. I registered L2 right after passing L1 when I am encouraged by my passing L1. After relaxing for several months, I feel hard to focus on it. I love learning, but taking the exam needs courage and dedication. I’m already old enough comparing with most of you here. If I give up this time, I’ll probably never try it again. That means I can only be a trader later on. Do I really like it? I don’t know. That’s why I asked this question to meself and others.

i think there are 3 fundamental issues that make up day trading… 1) having the initial capital to start (at least 10k i would say) 2) having the discipline to cut your losses and not trying to ride to the apex of every upswing 3) getting a good sense of how a specific stock or group of stocks moves based on daily market trends and maybe throwing some stats in there (like what days a stock is more likely to go up based on historical data or something…) the more money you have the less magnitude change you need to see to experience more returns. if you’ve got $1 million, you can buy a stock for $5…on a dime raise you can make 20k in a matter of moments…or lose it of course, but only if you don’t discipline yourself to get out quick enough if you see it’s not going up. seems pretty easy to me…i look forward to selling my car and using the money to start day trading soon.

I tried day trading a before. I do not think it is such a good idea. Day trading has little to do with CFA material. People talked about psychology of trading a lot. Actually, it is simply that their trading method does not work. Also we have a constantly changing market. Once market changes, patterns changes, many day traders will lose out. I have never seen anyone successfully doing this for a long period of time. They all lose eventually.

Isn’t the minimum initial investment to be somewhat successful day trading around $50K?

Minimum is 25K. At least that was the amount when I tried this. You got 4 times margin instead of 2 so you can lose really fast. :slight_smile: