How Much Do Day Traders Make

Day trading can be the best way to escape the rat race and get out of your cubicle day job. But in order to replace that salary, you really need to understand how much traders make. Can you make enough money to live? How risky is it?

When you want to understand how much day traders actually make, it helps to have the correct context. Day trading can be a sideline for some people, a way to create some extra income each day by trading for a few hours at a time. Or it can be a real career for those that want to take the risk and put in the time and effort. 

Well, day trading can be risky for certain people. More than 90% of day traders lose money. But those traders are usually the ones that think they can go out into the stock market and wing it, with no training and no education. That is not the case.

It takes time to learn how to use informative interactive brokers and find the stocks that are poised to blow up and make big moves. It takes effort and education to implement the strategies that allow day traders to make real profits on these hot stocks. 

Day traders that take the time to learn these strategies can make money. Sometimes they can grind out pedestrian salaries of $50,000 or $75,000 per year. But other traders can make six figures. That takes time to get to that level. It takes emotionless trading and risk management instincts and techniques that are time consuming to learn. 

It can be done. You just need to have the drive and willingness to study and practice. Profitable traders don’t make huge bets and win giants sums each day. What they really do is search everyday for the 5-10% winners and rack them up, while also minimizing losing trades.

You need to have a set of rules that stay the same for each trade. You need to decide your loss limit and profit target before you pull the trigger on a trade. And you to need to stick to those rules. On every single trade. That is how you come out profitable over the long term. Risk management is such an important part of being a profitable day trader. And so is record keeping. You need to know how you did each day so that you can keep track of all your trades and stay in the black. 

So is day trading the right path for you? Try out Warrior Trading’s free day trading chat room and see for yourself.

For more information on how to find stocks to trade, check out Warrior Trading on StockTwits.