Training with full time job

[ktradestocks 0]

Hello all. I started with bear bull traders a couple weeks ago. I, as well as I'm sure many other people this year, started trading with Robinhood. I initially started with just buying a blue chip stock and watching it grow. Then I started researching penny stock trading and now day trading. Fortunately I made a few good trades, but have made several more bad trades. Thus a big reason for me joining this community to try and train properly and hopefully be able to make a living out of this.

I'm curious to know who else here is training while maintaining a full time job. With my schedule, Monday is the only trading day I have off  so it makes it impossible to watch the chat room all week or practice with the DAS simulator. I've been watching the classes here and still reading through Andrew's book in the meantime.

I find a lot of excitement in watching stocks during the day when my job allows me. I find it frustrating when I find a stock that I'd possibly buy into, but don't pull the trigger due to being at work. Then I'll look back later in the day and see how much I could have made. I've also lost money this way by buying into something only to find it sink. One thing I've always felt that was missing from any of my jobs is an analytical aspect and it's something I love to do. I do believe I can achieve my goals, but I must say it's hard to stay focused and learn while having to focus on so many other things.

Anyways thanks for reading my ramblings and if you have any thoughts or inputs on training I'd love to hear them. 

[Gary Rempel 1]

Hey Ktradestocks! I'm in a similar situation. I work every weekday, but am able to trade up to 10am Market Time. This means I trade mainly Pre-market, with a little extra (kind of like a cherry on the top ;)). I'm working on just learning and making small profits. For now I'm just trying to achieve 1%/day (once compounded, is extraordinary for the long term). I would love it if there was a chat group that focussed on those of us with a full time job, while learning to be profitable traders. Hey moderators, what do you think?

[mhileman 21]

I as well have a full time day job that starts at 7am-4pm but I am able to work from home which allows me to be able to watch the market all day long as well as be in the chat with the entire BBT team.  However, being able to watch it and pay enough attention to what is going on is a different thing.  I usually take about an hour away from doing my day job to be able to at least try to make a decent trade from 9:30-10:30am. One day I'm hoping to be in a position to where I can trade like most of the moderators and be able to go out and enjoy life with the family more often.   

[MattfromNZ 55]

On 11/29/2020 at 4:10 PM, Gary Rempel said:

Hey Ktradestocks! I'm in a similar situation. I work every weekday, but am able to trade up to 10am Market Time. This means I trade mainly Pre-market, with a little extra (kind of like a cherry on the top ;)). I'm working on just learning and making small profits. For now I'm just trying to achieve 1%/day (once compounded, is extraordinary for the long term). I would love it if there was a chat group that focussed on those of us with a full time job, while learning to be profitable traders. Hey moderators, what do you think?

I was wondering what strategies you are using to trade pre-market and is your watch list much different from most traders in the chatroom?

[Gary Rempel 1]

Hey MattfromNZ! I'm still learning. That being said, My watchlist is focussed on both small/low floats with (blah, blah, blah) and known stocks with well known Range-Of-Day price action (of course with setups, news, etc). It is both for the quick and fast (scalping) and long haul stocks (those stocks I don't mind holding for the next 3 months or more). If I am going to hold a stock once I leave my home office, it can only be a stock I am comfortable with as an investment stock. Otherwise, I take a loss and leave for work ready to focus on my work. Strategy wise, I focus on levels, and chart pattern for confirmation of entries. BUT, I am not the one to ask about proven strategies and whatnot. There are others far better at this than me. This is just my decided approach to learning, trading, etc. 

Scanner wise, I use the gappers list from other sites as I get up to start trading at 7:30EST. If there is nothing there, I have some faithful stocks that consistently move during the day. 

[Saarinen 2]

Hope this thread is still active, just noticed it.

It is really tough to trade with a full-time job. I'm still mostly trading in the simulator and I'm lucky that I can trade from 9:30am-12pm(I live in East coast!). After that I have to get ready to go to work, unfortunately.

I've been trading in the simulator for almost 8 months now and I wish I could quit my day job and become full-time day trader. Then I could concentrate 100% on trading and I would have more free time to study and practice all the strategies, risk management, psychology lessons etc. I try to read and watch some of the lessons on my lunch breaks on my phone, which is not ideal. It's been really long process so far and now I'm just starting to be consistently profitable.

-I wrote this on my lunch break, lol

[Hux 3]

I too hope this thread is still alive.

I work a full time job.  My boss is kind enough to let me take an "early" 1 1/2 hour lunch break.  I'm on AST where the market opens 10:30 am local time.  I jump in the car at 10am, drive like hell to get home at 10:20, flash up my trading station, copy the stocks in play, set my levels and am ready 2 minutes before the open.  I trade for 25 minutes, but it's the best time of the day to trade.  Opening range / ABCD/ parabolic reversals.  Then back to work for 11:30.  I review and journal my trades each night.  It's hectic, but at least I'm trading and progressing.  I've been doing this for a year now.

Not easy, but if you can find a way to trade the open, it's worth it.  Build your account till you can trade full time.  Good luck you guys...if you (we) can trade and work full time, think how great it will be to trade full time without that pesky day job!

[the_n1nja 0]

Hi guys,

I'm living in Germany, so actually market open for NYSE is 3:30 pm in Germany, the pre-market show starts at 2:30 pm local time here. So what I do is, I have some days when I have less meetings, then I simply block my calendar in the afternoon from 2:30 pm to 5 pm and do some trading until maybe even 5:30 pm (that would be 11:30 am NY time). But I try to choose the days when this is feasible. So even though I'm currently working from home due to the pandemic, I try to not have any trading days in parallel to meetings for my 9-5 job, because I realized I'm not really focused on either, and it's simply a bad idea. If you do that, you will make a lot of mistakes, and you can't even really learn from them that well, because you have a built-in excuse, that you were not focused on it properly, etc.  

 

So I would say, try to find the time of day when you can do it, and in the beginning, don't put too much pressure on yourself to be trading every day for X hours, just do it whenever it best fits your schedule, even if that is only 2 or 3 days per week, it's still progress! My plan is, if trading goes well and can cover some of my expenses, to eventually reduce the working time for my job from full-time to part-time, so that I can trade every day without any additional stress from my normal job.

 

Kind regards,

DC