 And after trading for eight and a half years, I think that I'm pretty qualified to answer the question of, is day trading for a living possible? Now, before we continue, if you go to myinvestingclub.com, you could see my broker statements of my verified seven and a half million dollars of profit in the last three years trading. So the question that I get asked all the time, and the reason why I'm making this video is, do people really think that you could be day trading for a living? Do you see all of these online advertisements, all these people on Lambos, all these crazy things? Yeah, I have a Lambo. I have all the fancy things. And the truth of the matter is, it took me a very, very long time to get to this level. So I'm going to talk about my trading journey, what I use to, you know, get to this level. And I'm going to kind of answer some of the questions that you guys have about what is needed to trade professionally for a living. So I started trading in 2014. I was a barista at Starbucks making $150 a week after taxes. And I had a girl at the time. I would spend maybe $60 on gas, another $40 on movie tickets. And if I was lucky, I had an extra $40 left. And when I started, I really wanted to, you know, make money like the people in the Wall Street movies and nice cars and nice suits and nice everything. And over my journey, I learned that, you know, this stuff is not supposed to be easy, right? It's possible, but it's not easy. So I learned that the biggest wealth creators in America were real estate and the stock market. Real estate has a really, really big barrier to entry. You need to have at least some money to be involved in real estate, whereas in the stock market, you can open up a day trading account with as little as $500. Now, when I first started, I didn't know what day trading was. I just thought the only way to make money in the stock market was to buy and hold, right? What does Warren Buffett do? What do all these big-time people do? They buy and they hold. I didn't know that you could buy and sell on the same day or short and cover on the same day. So that was number one, is I wasn't really educated to the point of what you had to do or the different ways to skin a cat in trading. So when I first started trading, I had a magical talent of every single time that I bought a stock, it would crater. I think I still have that talent today. I just hit the buy button and boom, the bottom falls out. So my first year trading, I spent it buying breakouts because that's what I thought was the best way to make money. And then by my second year trading, I learned what shorting was. Shorting is how you make money when stocks go down. And for me, this magical talent that I had of buying stocks and them cratering, my thought process was if I just shorted these stocks and they would crater, I would make a lot of money. So I still remember my first short trade. I shorted 2,000 shares of a stock, VGGL, it's not even trading anymore. And I made $1,050 a share in like a couple minutes and that changed my life forever. After that, what I started to do is I started to short every single stock that was up. And that is a surefire way to lose money. So by my third year trading, I started to have a routine, I started to have a process and I started to narrow down certain stocks that I was looking for that fit my criteria, that fit my strategy. And by the end of year three and year four is when I became a profitable trader. Now, the reason why I'm explaining this is because day trading for a living is possible. It is very, very possible to make a lot of money trading. The problem is that just like going to medical school for a doctor or just like going to law school for like a lawyer, there has to be some sort of education involved in your trading or else you're not going to know what you're doing. Someone that wants to be a doctor doesn't go on Google and look up, all right, how am I going to perform the surgery? You're going to learn from other doctors. So when I first started trading, it took me years and years and years to find a trading mentor, which was Bao. Bao was a guy that took me under his wing and taught me trading and had I had that mentor earlier, had I had that teacher earlier, I would have found profitability in half the time, right? So I always want to go back to the main thing of this video, which is is day trading for a living possible? It's the same question is, is it possible to be a doctor? Is it possible to be a lawyer? Is it possible to be an engineer? It's possible to be whatever you want. The question is how much work and how much education are you willing to put in? I would say the average doctor makes half a million dollars a year, but he has to go to school for eight years. You know, the average lawyer probably makes $200,000, $300,000 a year, but they have to go to law school for six years. So for a trader that is going to make hundreds of thousands of dollars, at least at very minimum, you got to go to trading school for one year, or you got to at least learn from someone for one year, or you got to at least practice it for one year because I make more than a doctor, I make more than a lawyer, I make more than an engineer combined, but it took me years and years and years to get to this point. So the main thing of this video I want you to understand is everyone's journey is different. Everyone's path is different. But what remains constant in every single path of a high net paying job is there has to be some sort of education involved, some sort of lessons involved. So for example, just to compare it to a doctor. So a doctor, after he goes to medical school, he practices on dead bodies until he gets the hang of it. And then after he successfully handles dead bodies, then he watches his doctor, his mentor perform on live bodies. And after that, then he performs on those live bodies himself. So in trading, your first job is to be educated, to go to school. After you go to school, your way of practicing on dead bodies is using a paper trading account. You're going to be paper trading for two to three months to get the hang of it. After you're paper trading for a few months, then you're going to be in a community of traders that are successful traders that you could watch and learn. And after you watch and learn and after you've practiced, then you could go live trading your own account. But the main thing that I want you to understand is trading is a marathon. It is not a sprint. It takes, I know people that didn't make money for 10 years. And then on their 10th year, they made $100,000. I know someone that started trading and after two months made $100,000. So it all depends, right? It's a variable of how much work you are willing to put into your trading. So for example, if I want to get muscular, if I want to get jacked, if I want to get huge, you know, if I go to the gym once a week versus going to the gym seven days a week, I'm going to get different results. If I am just paper trading once a week or I'm paper trading five days a week, I'm going to get different results. So trading for a living is possible. I've done it. We've taught thousands of people how to do it. But the big thing that you have to understand is it's very, very, very based on how much work you are willing to put in and how much patience you have. If someone told you, hey, I could teach you how to make $100,000, but for one year, you got to bust your ass. Most people are going to say, hell yeah, but the problem isn't trading. It's not so linear. You know, in 2020, I made, in 2020, I made, I think, over a million dollars trading. In 2022, I made $3 million, in 2021, I made $3 million trading. And 2022, I made about a million and a half dollars trading. So every year is different. Every year is different based on the opportunities in the market. Now, what I also want to mention to you guys is if you're just trying to shoot in the dark, if you guys are just trying to figure this out on your own, I mean, I'm telling you guys are doomed because that's not really how trading works. There's no way to just close your eyes and stock pick and make money. What you need in trading is you need a repeatable process. You need a strategy. Here's the key, right? You need to know how to find the stocks of trade. You need to know the right strategy to trade them. And you need to know how to repeat the strategy. So how to find the stocks of trade is very easy. What we look for is the highest percentage gainers on the day. How to trade these stocks, right? So for me, as a short buys trader, I'm waiting for the top to be set and I'm shorting that lower high with a stop at the top of that candle. And how to repeat the strategy is, does this strategy come every single day, every single week, every single month? And if the answer is yes, and you can repeat it with a high percentage win rate, then you got a golden strategy, you know what I'm saying? So I want to keep this video short and sweet so that you guys understand, you know, what is possible in the markets. And again, go to myinvestingclub.com and look at my broker statements. Check my broker statements. It's all there. So yeah, guys, as the Christmas times are coming, as we're getting close to the year end, it's time to make some New Year's resolutions. So, you know, just some New Year's resolutions for me is I want to be able to, you know, step out of my comfort zone and start going long stocks again, right? So my biggest thing is I'm a 90% short-buyest trader. I make money when stocks go down. This year, every single stock has been going down, so it's been really good. But for me, I want to learn how to improve my long-buyest trades. I want to stop out even faster on stocks. I want to improve my risk management. I want to get even better. So even as an eight-year veteran trader who's made millions of dollars trading, every year I'm trying to get better and better and better. So what I think would be a cool idea is if you guys leave a comment in this video of what you want to get better in your own trading, and then we could kind of go back and look at these comments and see, hey, if I want to improve on my pattern recognition, if I want to improve on my stock selection, if I want to improve on my share size, if I want to improve on my loss, hey, maybe we could start to make videos on topics like that. But aside from that, guys, as Christmas time is approaching, you know, we are having a great, great, great Christmas promotion launching. If you go to myinvestingclub.com slash Christmas, and I'm going to put a link in the description, you could join our community for $99, right? $99, this is 50% off, right? So we don't usually do a monthly membership for MIC members anymore. We usually just keep it to annual lifetime because we want people that are committed. We want people that want to be here for a year or want to be here for a life because it's impossible to learn trading in a month. So we decided to bring the monthly membership to you guys so that you could at least get a look into our community. And then once you're in our community, once you see everything we offer, once you see our watches, once you see everything, and you're ready to go to annual, you're ready to go to lifetime, you know what? We'll discount the price of the monthly. But to be honest, guys, this is your best chance to learn. This is your best opportunity to learn. There has never been a better time to trade in the market because the market right now is going to teach you. If you get in on the market right now, you're going to learn how to thrive when the conditions get easier, when the conditions get better, when there's more money to be made because the reality is the stock market will always be the best wealth generator in the world. And learning how to trade stocks is the best thing ever because even when the pandemic happened and the entire world was shut down, one business was open and that was the stock market. And that proved to me that no matter what, even if there's a crazy virus sickness, whatever the stock market will remain open. So learn how to make money in a business that will remain open forever and ever and ever. So the monthly membership is only available until the end of the year. After that, it's gone and we are raising prices. So thank you guys. Hope you enjoyed this video. Remember, leave your New Year's resolution in the description and let's go through it together on the next video.