To be honest, I wouldn't recommend the stock market to people who are worried about the next two months of groceries. Short term trading for non-institutional investors is more gambling than investment. The market doesn't follow any predictable rules and you can easily lose just as much as you can win.
If you want to invest in stocks as a private person, you should choose a widespread ETF product and not touch it for decades. With day trading you'll definitely lose in the long term.
To be honest, it was a friend who introduced me to stocks. He made 200k in two years. I tried it and put little money that was not even 1% of my entire year's salary, as I am aware that one should put money they are okay with losing and will not affect their entire lives in just one second. However, little did I know that the trading platform I was recommended by said friend is CFD, which is entirely different to investing. And I lost that entire 0.5% of my yearly salary.
Thanks Aron! You didn't tell me CFD is risky!
The loss wasn't that huge but still considerable. Now I do proper investing and set aside 10% of my monthly wage to investing into my stock portfolio, which I am confident will grow in years to come. But then a quarter of that money I set aside monthly, I would put it into CFD. I started in CFD, so might as well steam ahead with it. With lesson learned, more research and practice under my belt, I am confident that I have good grasp of trading but I will still be playing safe enough. If I stick to my strategy and remain patient, I should be able to earn some profit even if it's not the same 20% again.
IMHO CFDs are nothing private investors should ever touch. It's like taking a loan to buy and sell stocks and as said - the market is not predictable. Institutional investors have far better and way earlier insights than you as a private investor. You have no chance in beating them. Sure, one can be lucky, as your friend. But that's not investing then. That's gambling. You can as well multiply your portfolio in a casino, but for obvious reasons that is not a good idea.
It’s easy to make profit when you don’t risk anything.
It's okay
You would have lost 10 times as much in the next two seconds
Haha that's true.
Akshually, that hypothetical 20% profit is 20% of what I lost from stock trading from the previous entire year. It took me that much of embarrassing huge losses to finally read up and practice more about trading (and my circumstances now finally allowed me to do so). I guess now it is finally paying off but in practice mode! And I guess I had bit of luck at the moment since Trump's tariff had been ruled unconstitutional by the federal court, so the stock market feel very confident.
If you measure your "look how much money I could have made!!" in "groceries" and not "how many years earlier can I retire", I really think you should invest your money in something with less risk.
I don't know your exact situation, and you said you've done a lot of reading and practice, but how strong is your willpower? Can you set a budget of money you can afford to lose without affecting your life, and stick to it NO MATTER what? If you are honest with yourself and know you would dip into your savings if you were "sure" you knew you were going to make a profit, then please unsubscribe from anything that brags about trading profits, and find your dopamine hits somewhere else. It is expensive to be poor in this country, and if you make one mistake and lose money you can't afford to, you might never get out of that hole for the rest of your life.
But! If you can set a budget and stick to it no matter what, then I wish you the best of luck!!!
EDIT: I said "in this country" assuming you live in USA. Maybe you live somewhere else, but I'll bet it's expensive being poor in a lot of countries.
I just signed up and put a bunch of extra money in EFTs and I’m up like 30% after five years, I did no research
When you trade stocks, you're betting that you're smarter than the person you're trading with.
ew gambling apps
Those are rookie numbers. Sometimes I make 80%. Sometimes it's more like -99% But even when it's 80% it's like $80 in profits.
