This is pretty underreported. Day Trading is a form of Gambling and a majority of gamblers (of all kinds) lose over a 10 year period. You cannot win every single time so it only takes one big lose to clean you out completely.
This is why I prefer to be a long term investor. A friend of mine who has studied investing for years recommends people save somewhere between 3000 and 10,000 dollars and put that in a savings account first before they start investing as a long term investor.
Why?
Because the whole point of a long term investor isn't short term gain. Instead it is long term gain. A relative of mine invested $50,000 in GE in the 1950s. By 2000 that stock was worth $3,000,000. But, only by keeping this $50,000 in GE stock for almost 50 years did it ever reach $3,000,000.
Now will every stock you invest in do this?
No Way!
However, if you go through your stocks once every year or every 6 months and weed out the ones that are not performing and then sell them to buy better performing stocks, you might have one stock that you invest $50,000 in today becoming worth $3,000,000 50 years from now too.
What happens to most long term investors?
They get rich over time by patiently waiting and not selling their principle and by only using dividends earned from their stocks.
The backbone of the wealth in this country is mostly obtained by long term investors. Often these people own businesses and so save enough money to invest and become even more wealthy over time.
So, what does it take to become a long term investor? Time, money and patience. Most people who are long term investors tend to own their own businesses too.
So, a good place to start is to start or buy your own business. I started my first business when I was 28. In starting a business the trick is the capacity to wear enough different hats to be successful.
In other words you need enough life experience to be salesman, manufacturer, shipper, bookkeeper etc.
Until you have enough experience to do all this or have relatives or friends to help you it is hard to have a successful business to operate to generate investment capital for you ongoing.
The other trick in generating wealth is to have diversified investments over many sectors so when one sector is down other sectors are up. So, ideally you want 20 to 30 different stocks you are invested in over many different sectors.
Sectors means things like Tech stocks, banking stocks, food stocks, etc.
The worst thing you can do is just to own one companies stock because if that one company fails (for any reason) you have lost everything.
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