Can daytraders make a living?

Answer 1

Some day traders make money, but the vast majority lose money. You may luck out early on, but to make money in the long run is very hard.
The stock market is great for long term investment for retirement, but day trading is highly risky. See this government website and other site:

Answer 2

The answer is yes. In fact, now that one of my parent's neighbors is retired, he makes more money daytrading than he did working.

BUT it's extremely risky! First of all, the idea is not to hold onto those investments for very long, but rather to quickly buy low and sell high, thus making a quick buck.

And you have to do lots and lots of trading, which ups the commissions.

Bottom-line, day trading is risky business and should only be attempted by "experts" in understanding how the financial markets work, and can afford to loose. Personally, I would avoid it like the plague, but that's me.

Answer 3

That depends...lets take a moment and analyze other types of people that sit at their computer 24/7 waiting for the next "big" thing to happen....

"Computer Gamer" - All that time playing Diablo II, and yet still only a level 86 necromancer...not very rewarding

"Chatter" - Amazing amount of time logged in the chatrooms...Incredible typing speed (not so much on the accuracy)...and yet, once Yahoo got rid of the "kiddie" rooms, you're still on the prowl for the "little one" in disguise in the adult rooms

"Web Designer" - Not good enough to be an artist, not smart enough to program something worth while. But you'll sell your soul to be able to write the code for some retard to stupid to look it up for free on the internet...Poor poor webdesigner

"Affiliate Program Addict" - All you've got to do is sign up for enough affiliate programs, redirect thousands of people's buying habits through you're awesome geocities website, and poof...$13 from amazon, $5.60 from petco, and a whopping $27.49 from walmart.com...Never been better at the Pink Flamingo Trailer Court!

So now that we've analyzed some other daytime all online activities...hopefully we've opened up a can of "whoopass" on daytrading.

"Daytrading" - Finally, a profession where you can sit at home, stare at your computer, and every 5 minutes call your stock broker asking him/her if you should buy or sell. And in the "off" minutes you can chat with anyone you'd like. But then agian at the end of the night when you've bought and sold the same 10 shares of google stock, yahoo's stock still kicked ur *** and by the time you pay all the brokerage fees, you're just that...broke!

Answer 4

Just look at it this way. If it were that easy...wouldn't anyone has tried it at least by now? Do you hear a lot of stories of success with proven and willing to share(!) folks or ...failures. Of course, one could make a living out of it. But so could be done off regular trading of stocks, not daily though. Look at Googles of today, companies in distress of some sort - GM -, big sharks like Citigroup. There is nothing wrong by tracing just a bunch of well-known companies and make a buck here and there acting on their solid financials and analysis or...even pure news busts. Why not?

Answer 5

Yes, you can, but it's extremely risky. There are very few who are actually successful at it. The majority of people think they can and end up losing money.

Answer 6

Yes, but I hear it is risky and very stressful.

And very hard to be good enough to make a living at it.

Answer 7

Yes.

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