Whenever I meet someone and they find out that I'm a day trader, they have a series of questions and those questions are all about the money. Ross Is day trading a reasonable way for me to make money Russ How much money do day Traders make Ross What are the taxes like for a day trader Russ How did you get started trading I.E How can I get started day trading? So I want to answer a couple of these questions for you guys here today. and I want to start by saying that there's a lot of ways to make money working from home that are going to be a lot easier than day trading. Now they're total profit potential may be lower, but the success rate may be higher and that's a question that you have to ask yourself whether or not you're willing to take the chance to try to be a Trader And so one of the big questions that we need to answer is what does it take to be a successful day trader? So the first question I'm going to answer is day trading a reasonable way to make money? I Will tell you that I felt more than 10 years ago when I got into trading when I was living up in Vermont that it was the most reasonable way for me to start making a little bit of money working from home I was in a situation where I felt debilitated by panic attacks which I was having on a daily basis I didn't feel that I could work a regular nine to five job I could have done things within my comfort zone.

Uh, I could have mowed lawns again. there were something Landscaping There were some things that I could do, but they weren't going to make me a lot of money. and my spark for day trading came from a friend who made sixteen thousand dollars trading a penny stock and I thought man, if he can do it, maybe I can do it. And so I naively jumped in and you know I I was good with computers so learning trading software was no big deal.

I already sort of understood the mechanics of the market because this was just after you know the 2008. Great Recession So I I studied the market a little bit I found it really interesting and and I dove right in. But like I said, there are a lot of ways that you could make money working from home. They're going to be easier than trading and I want to just map this out for one second.

So I think about day trading. Um, and right now let's kind of map this out. in terms of um, day trading. this is going to be um, success rate over here.

So this would be like 100 success rate. This would be like a zero percent. Uh and then this is you know, profit potential, how much money you can make. So and and we're just talking about the things that you could do working from home like you could be like you know a Hollywood movie star which is a very low success rate of that happening and you make a lot of money.

But we're just talking about things you could do working from home. So uh, on the lower profit side, you know you could go on upwork, you could do freelancing and you know your success rate will probably be pretty high, right? you'll be. You'll be kind of like up in this area, but you won't make a ton of money. and then there are people I have some friends that sell jewelry on Etsy and they do fairly well with it.

They're not making millions of dollars, but they're doing well. and the success rate I Don't know what it is, but it seems that if you make a good product, you could do well. so you know and that might even. You know some people you know.

if you map this out, there's different people, people in different areas. you know, whatever. so you know this might be sort of in this area of selling stuff on eBay and Etsy There's people that go to yard sales and they buy old things and then they resell them or even people that go to TJ Maxx or you know what? like yeah, I guess TJ Maxx is a popular place to go to and then they resell things on Amazon So you've got this. It's called Marketplace Arbitrage that people do so you know maybe I don't know, that's Somewhere In Here Also And then you have day trading which you know is is kind of down here When you if you try to figure out um, what the success rate of day trading is, it's really hard to know because there's not a lot of published studies that actually tell us what percentage of people who are day Traders make money, so we really just are left guessing.

But we've always been told that the success rate is low, the failure rate is very high. But what we also know is that the people that do find success the few that are successful. Some of those people make a lot of money and that's something that is certainly I think uh The lure that pulls people into trading I will tell you that for me, it wasn't about making a lot of money I Just felt that at that time it was the easiest way to make maybe 200 a day. You know, mowing lawns in Vermont was twenty dollars a lawn for small Lawns So doing 10 Lawns a day You know if you're in a neighborhood I mean that's going to be a full day to make 200 bucks and that's not accounting for the cost of your lawnmower.

We're in fuel and this and that. so so day trading. If I could click and click, buy a penny stock and sell it and make 200 bucks. or if I could just do that once every three or four months, That to me felt much more obtainable.

And so that's kind of what got me into it. So to me, it felt reasonable. Whether or not it's reasonable to you is going to depend on your risk tolerance and you know your comfort with some of the things that are required to be a day trader. So let's kind of answer that question.

What does it take to be a successful? Trader What do you need? What kind of aptitude do you need? Honestly, you got to be kind of aggressive and I am not a very aggressive person, but you have to be a little aggressive. You have to fight a little bit. Warrior Trading Day Trade Warrior The market is a battle. You are fighting.

You are fighting. Against The Machine You're fighting against the algorithm. It's always been that way. or it's been that way for a long time.

It's going to be that way For a long time. We are fighting against the institutional Traders That's how I've always felt. it's us, the little guys, the retail Traders Against those hedge funds, the big Bankers The institutional traders who are trying to take money out of our pocket. They've been taking money out of our pocket this whole time.

They do it with payment for order flow and everything else. And so I've always felt that to be a successful day trader, you've got to be willing to fight. You've got to be a little aggressive, and obviously you have have to have some risk tolerance because trading comes with losses. There's no such thing as a Trader that doesn't experience loss, so you've got to be aggressive.

You've got to be willing to fight. You've got to be a risk taker at least a little bit. We know that trading is risky, so you've got to be willing to take that risk. You also need to become Under Pressure now from someone who suffered from panic attacks I Don't know that I'm really the most naturally suited for this, but I guess I Found a way to kind of train myself to stay calm Under Pressure Because the fact is, you have to make decisions fairly quickly to cut your losses to jump in on something that's moving quickly.

You know you have to be able to make those decisions. In the Heat of the Moment And so you know, a quick decision maker, calm under pressure and then there's got to be some computer aptitude there. You know, If my um, 95 year old great uncle says hey, I think I want to day trade I'm going to have to say, you know, let's get real. This isn't going to happen.

You probably don't even have the reflex. uh, you know I could throw you a marker and it's going to hit you in the face. So I don't think you're going to be the one pressing the buttons here and and firing those orders into the market. You know in real time.

So you have to be honest with yourself about whether or not this is a landscape where you can compete All right. So what it takes to be a Trader You got to be aggressive. You got to be risk taker. You got to have some computer aptitude.

You got to be calm Under Pressure But be able to make some relatively quick decisions. So if you could do all that, the next question is Ross how much money do day Traders make And the truth is, we don't know the answer to that question. There's no studies of the U.S equities market and Traders in it of how much they make on average how much the most successful Traders make, how much the average Trader makes what the success rate is ETC We just don't know. So what I could do is I could share with you my own success rate.

Now if you look at our website Oryourtrain.com you'll see my last eight years of broker statements and what you'll see is that starting in 2017, I funded an account with 583 dollars I then have grown it now to well over 10 million dollars. I'm getting close to 12 million in gross profit. but I'm an outlier, right? I'm not your typical success story I'm a success story, but not your typical success story I Have met a lot of traders who make six figures and you know over a hundred thousand dollars a year. And one of the things that seems to separate those who'll make maybe 75 to 100 000 a year or 150 000 and those who make millions is risk tolerance.

So I have no traders who have been trading for years and years, but are still kind of averaging 500 to 700 a day, which is a six-figure salary that's great, and they seem to be content with that. They're not pushing for more to push for more, you'd have to take more risk, you'd have to be comfortable with bigger drawdowns. and they are not. and so they have kind of.

They've plateaued, but on their own accord, they've sort of chosen to stop at that level. And then there are traders that have a risk appetite that is even bigger than mine. and they just Excel. So I suppose the answer is that you will be in charge of how much you make or lose, and it will be based on your ability to maintain discipline to have the willpower to cut your losses and your risk appetite.

I Wish I could give you a numerical answer that this is the average salary and this is the exact success rate, but we just don't know that information. So then the next question is how much money do you pay in taxes? And this is kind of a funny one to me because the taxes? that a Trader makes are not more than you would pay if you were working a regular job. So if you work a regular job, you pay a ton of taxes on your W-2 paycheck. When you're a Trader you don't pay W2 right? You don't.

You don't have a payroll, but at the end of the year you will have income tax based on the total amount that you've made. What you get from your broker is a 1099 and it will show your total short-term capital gains which are taxed at a regular income tax bracket the same as regular W-2 wages. The only difference is that you do not pay self-employment tax. The interesting thing with short-term capital gains from the stock market is that it's not considered earned wages in the way a small business making the same amount of money you know, freelancing, even even Landscaping like mowing lawns.

If you were Incorporated and you were mowing lawns and plowing and you're self-employed you would be subject to the self-employment tax. But day trading income is not subject to that because it's not considered earned income. of course. Always consult a CPA taxes and tax laws.

It's subject to change, so who knows what it'll be five years from now. But as of right now, the income that you would make as a Trader you would pay the same tax or even a little bit less tax than if you were a W-2 employee. So I I Don't really think too much about taxes, but one of the things that you can do as a Trader and this is something that's really important is you can day trade in a tax deferred or tax-free account. in the US I trade in a Roth IRA which means my profit is tax free.

I Paid income tax on my initial contributions to a traditional IRA then did a Roth conversion. It's called a backdoor conversion. You could do it with TD Ameritrade super easy and then just like that you've got a Roth IRA that you can grow tax-free and then you can take the money out at retirement age, tax-free The only problem is if you make all this money and it's in a tax-free account you you will have to figure out a way to make money in the interim to pay your bills. So what a lot of Traders do is they'll have two accounts, one for the money they need to make to pay bills and then the other which is icing on the cake.

It's tax-free and that account just keeps growing. So that is a really cool thing about trading and investing in general that you can use 401ks or IRAs for your long-term investing and even your short-term Trading if you're still watching, that means you're probably interested in the answer to the next question. How do I get started trading? So here's the deal. the best way to get started is just to immerse yourself in trading.

Number one. Set a schedule, set a schedule of when you're going to sit down and practice trading each day. If you can do it when the Market's open, that's obviously the best. Do not trade in a real money account until you first proven profitability in a simulator.

So set up a simulated trading account. I have software that you guys can use. If you don't want to use my software, use TD Ameritrade It's more or less free. You just have to set up an account with them.

But you know once the account's set up, you could you could Sim trade there and that's a great way to start trading. The most important thing is that you're trading in a safe environment because you will make rookie mistakes. You're a beginner, you don't. You really know what you're doing yet, so don't beat yourself up for making those mistakes.

Do it in a safe environment where the losses aren't a big deal. Keep watching videos like this. Hopefully you subscribe to my Channel I have a ton of video lessons right here for free on YouTube strategy sessions walking you through everything from high level strategy all the way down to the nitty gritty details of tape reading. level Two hotkeys, cetera.

So you have come to the right place. Keep studying the process of getting started trading. A lot of people, they just fund an account with real money and next thing you know, they're punching buttons and they're losing money. That's not the right way.

Don't worry about funding a real money account yet. Don't worry about that yet. First establish that you can figure out a way to make money consistently that you have what it takes to be a successful Trader You've got the computer aptitude, that you've got the level of aggressiveness, the level of risk taking required, and that you can find a way to battle the market each day and get a little bit of money that you can carve out for yourself. So take a little money away from those institutions, put it in your pocket.

And if you could do that consistently, then you'll figure out a way to fund an account with real money. So first things first: practice, practice, practice. As always, if you guys have questions, leave them down below. I Respond to every question posted on my channel, so please ask me questions, Hit the thumbs up if you found this video helpful.

And I hope you subscribe to the channel so you can check out more episodes just like this. And here's a recommendation of two other episodes that you guys should check out depending on where you're at in the learning curve. I Think you'll find these helpful as you're thinking about getting started trading and really starting to focus and think more about strategy. So check out those episodes.

I Think you'll really enjoy them.