Apr 9 • General discussion
DAY TRADING AFTER 4 YEARS
Hey everyone — since a few of you have expressed interest in trying day trading, I figured I'd share my experience after 4 years in the space.
The promise is simple: learn this skill and you'll make $30k sipping cocktails by a pool in Dubai. The reality is something else entirely — it's one of the most competitive environments you'll ever encounter.
Short answer first, technical breakdown below.
NO, DAY TRADING IS NOT WORTH LEARNING. HERE'S WHY.
⚠️ WHY NOBODY IN THE TRADING WORLD WILL TELL YOU THIS
Before I get into it — ask yourself why you've never heard this take from a trading content creator or a full-time trader. The answer is simple: it goes directly against their identity and their income. Admitting trading isn't worth it means admitting their whole brand is built on something that doesn't work for most people. They can't say it. I have no such conflict. I'm not selling a course, I'm not managing your money, I have nothing to gain from telling you this. In fact, I'd rather be straight with you now so you don't waste 4 years like I did.
🏛️ TWO TYPES OF TRADERS: INSTITUTIONAL AND RETAIL
To become an institutional trader, you essentially need to be a borderline genius — top-tier university, math competition wins, the works. The job revolves around building mathematical models to gain a statistical edge, known in the industry as Alpha.
And when I say the strategies are complex, I mean genuinely insane. Citadel employs PhD physicists who analyze the shadows cast by oil barrels in satellite images to determine whether they're full or empty — giving them a read on oil supply before anyone else, so they can trade accordingly. Another team monitored Walmart parking lot density via satellite to predict earnings before the official announcement. This is the level you're competing against. These aren't traders — they're scientists with billion-dollar infrastructure. And the lifestyle matches the pressure: burnout is rampant even at this level. Most people in these roles flame out within a few years. The money is extraordinary, but the human cost is real.
The pay reflects the difficulty. Citadel offers junior quants around $300k/year base, with performance bonuses that can push into the millions. But it requires brilliance, elite connections, and a very privileged starting point.
📉 RETAIL TRADING: THE MATH IS BRUTAL
For the average person trading independently, a solid 20% annual return on a $10k account is just $2,000 in profit. Not life-changing. And this is the core problem — retail trading only makes meaningful money if you already have meaningful money. If you don't, the returns simply don't justify the time, stress, and risk.
You'd be far better off investing that energy into education or a high-income skill, building a real salary, and then putting your earnings to work in the market. Speaking of which — shoutout to Camelon, our community admin, who earns $75k/year through his profession. That's a magnificent, stable income built on real expertise. That is what smart investment in education looks like.
🎯 PROP FIRMS: A MODEL DESIGNED AGAINST YOU
Prop firms pitch a solution: pay a fee, take a challenge, get funded. Hit a 10% profit target without breaching a 10% drawdown, and keep the profits.
The catch? Their business model is your failure. If 20 people pay €100 and 18 fail — a roughly 90% failure rate — that's €1,800 to cover payouts to the rare winners. The people who have beaten it (yes, $500k and $2M payouts exist) mostly did so using high-variance, high-risk strategies — essentially betting on a lucky streak. That's not a career. That's a coin flip at scale.
⚖️ FULL-TIME TRADING VS. A SKILLED TRADE — A COMPARISON NOBODY MAKES
Let's be honest about what "going full time" actually means in each path.
FULL-TIME RETAIL TRADER: If you blow up your account — which the majority of retail traders do — you have nothing. No employer, no clients, no safety net. You're unemployed and potentially financially ruined, with a gap on your resume that's hard to explain.
ELECTRICIAN: After a few years, you've built a client base and real expertise. If your business fails? You can go work for someone else. Your skills don't disappear. You have options.
Skilled trades offer resilience. Retail trading offers fragility — all upside narrative, brutal downside reality.
🔍 BUT "RETAIL" DOESN'T MEAN "EASY"
I had a friend on Discord who was genuinely profitable. His edge? He analyzed options flow — institutions use options as hedges, and when they become overloaded, they unwind, creating brief predictable pressure on the market. He exploited that structural, repeatable behavior — a structural behavioral alpha. Smart. But he was paying $3,000/year for the data, trading his own capital, and had a full-time career as a doctor to fall back on. Context matters enormously.
📋 A NOTE ON CREDIBILITY — AND HUMILITY
I'm attaching my personal backtesting spreadsheet below for anyone curious. It covers 100 documented trades across 2020–2021 on FX, with full notes, equity tracking, and error corrections on every single trade. I'm sharing it not to show off, but to show what serious study in this space actually looks like.
And here's the honest part: even after all that work, I was still far from the level of the options flow trader I mentioned. That guy had years of specialized knowledge, expensive data, and a financial safety net I didn't have. My backtesting was solid — but it put into perspective just how deep this rabbit hole goes, and how far "dedicated amateur" is from "genuinely profitable professional."
💡 BOTTOM LINE
After 50+ hours of interviews with successful traders, my conclusion is clear: for most people, it's not worth it.
The highest-ROI investment you can make is in your own education and skills. Get a well-paying job, build expertise, stack capital — then, if you want, put some of it in the market.
If you have questions or want me to go deeper on any section, drop them in the comments — happy to answer.
STAY IN SCHOOL, KIDS. 📚
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DAY TRADING AFTER 4 YEARS
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