Day Trading & Traveling? Yes it is very possible.
As I continue to get more questions about exactly what it is I trade for a living I decided to do a video to show all of my travelers exactly what I do to make a living day trading.
Many people that are outside of the finance world have no idea what even a stock is. To put it simply, a stock (traded on a stock market where it is bought and sold) is a piece of paper that says you own a piece of a public company. There are a lot of restrictions when buying and selling stocks because of ownership.
The federal government also forbids anyone to day trade stocks unless they have a minimum of $25,000 in their account. This is called be pattern day trading rule.
When I first started day trading I did not have $25,000. Working for almost minimum wage and living paycheck to paycheck I decided to take out student loans worth $25,000 so I could get started.
What we trade is the futures markets. To give you a quick background futures are contracts that farmers created years ago to rely on a steady income. Due to the fluctuation in price of things like pot bellies and corn, farmers decided to sell a contract that would expire in the future.
Merchants would then purchase this “futures contract” and agree to by the product at a fixed price in the future.
What our day trading charts look like
To make matters even more complicated the beauty of American capitalism created E-mini futures. Emini futures are 1/5 the size of normal futures contracts and are traded electronically.
When a contract of an Emini Futures is purchased there isn’t an exchange of ownership similar to the stock market.
To try to explain what Emini futures are I will refer to the popular game of Monopoly. Everyone around the world should know what Monopoly is.
The only reason why a property on a Monopoly board is valuable is because the players of the game say it is valuable. This same concept can be applied to the Emini futures market.
Emini futures are essentially an imaginary market that only have value because day traders like myself say they do. The only difference between Emini futures and Monopoly is that we risk real money when we trade. A lot of money in fact.
We teach traders at an online Day Trading Academy via live market analysis classes, daily market recap classes, and review classes as well. We have had so much success with the students in the program that many are teaching the classes with us.
Just last week we had a trader that made $8000 his first day live.
Pretty amazing stuff. You can even find Brice, the Trading Voyageur that has a very similar lifestyle to mine, day trading & traveling.
Times are tough right now and many people are looking for the opportunity to work for themselves.
The view of our penthouse that we rented in Brazil (Trading Voyageur & WanderingTrader)
Everyone is looking for the viability of having a profession where they can work from themselves, anywhere in the world, at any time of the day.
This is the essence what success means to me, total utter less freedom.
Even if that means working for myself at 90 hours a week. I would rather work hundred 50 hours a week and create something for myself rather than be a slave in a cubicle for a corporation that will fire me at a moment’s notice.
In actuality we only trade for an hour or two a day. Due to my teaching & travel schedule I only trade between 5-10 days a month.
We teach all of our traders that it isn’t necessarily about making thousands of dollars every day, it is about just being consistent.
Once someone can start making just $100 every single day the possibilities are endless.
The futures market is much higher leveraged than the stock market. This means that for every dollar that a futures contract goes up we can make upwards of $50 or even $1000. $1000 refers to the highest profit of all futures markets which is oil.
It isn’t that hard to get started and while it does take an investment the most important thing is to have discipline and focus.
I have been day trading and traveling around the world now for nearly 4 years and I don’t plan to ever stop. We are working with the same traders mentioned earlier that have been through our training program and are trading live to open day trading centers around the world.
I mentioned in the floundering trader post how I planned on setting up a base in Colombia towards the middle of the year to focus on opening our very first trading center.
So now you know, owning your own business day trading isn’t really that hard. To view an example of exactly how it works watch the video below. This is a live class that we hosted with our students that are part of the training program at the Day Trading Academy. We even had a travel blogger sign up for the course!
Hey im also a online trading student. Good stuff hopefully soon ill be travelling everywhere as well.You guys inspire me to do better tnx.safe travel
Hello,
can you please explain me more about that platform? i am in USA i know many platforms but that one you are using is my first time. and usually in any market i use a candlestick signals , do we have choice in this platform to have a candlesticks or no? thank you.
NinjaTrader offers all of the above Remy.. a great platform to use for trading
You previously said one can get started for as little as $5000, but if the gov’t needs proof of $25000 in the bank, that’s not true.
Dave, the 25k requirement is for daytrading stocks. Futures traders are not subject to the Pattern Day Trader rule. You can trade futures with even less than 5k, but anything less doesn’t give you much of a buffer for mistakes.
If it is so easy to daytrade for a profit where are the day traders that take the losses of those lucky traders ? Excuse my ignorance but i tend to understand your site as advertising for your trading centers. The mayority of traders lose money because they can,t stick to their rules and their poor risk management. Traders first job is to manage risk nothing more nothing less. Successful trading is an art but playing with the dreams of the average citizen is not correct. If you have your first complete loss of your account, we talk about that topic trading is easy again.
Larry the site is roughly 90% travel related and 10% day trading. The day trading I do talk about is in response to the questions that I get about day trading. I can make these statements because I have been trading for over 10 years now and have seen what it takes to be successful.
sorry for my skepticism but i,m a prop trader for years now and i quitted a long time ago to search for the holy grail in trading. And unlike the stock market the futures market is not a wealth creating market, because simply put your gains are the losses of other traders. So in the futures market the competition is much tougher for that reason because it,s a zero sum play. Keep in mind you only can feed as a prop trader if you are not in the near of the sharks mouth when they feed. You have to build up your deep pokets for years, if you are able to.
You are a daring soul. Hats off to you for having a very strong stomach to endure the whims of the market!!
My ex-husband got deeply into day-trading commodities. He made some money here and there. But I’ll never forget the look on his face the day he lost $7,000. In one day. We could have had a very nice two week vacation at a high end tropical resort. Not!
He had all the chart stuff worked out, but the market unexpectedly went against him big time. Not fun!!!
I’m so glad you’ve found your calling, but it’s not for everyone…
hey marcello can you tell me what indicator you are using on ninja trader that is awesome for the outer limits and playing back to the mean is what i like to do most especially when the bands are flat to increase probability of success. Thanks!
Hey Daniel we give that out to everyone in our training program and also all of the trade setups as well. Check out http://thedaytradingacademy.com
Hello Marcello,
nice to read you. I just step into your interesting site. I love both traveling and trading. After 5 years of hard studies and unsuccessful practise I am still in the search of consistency. Recently I have moved from stock to futures so I have a questions about your video: which time frame were you using in your chart?
I suppose that to have such a good gain in so few minutes you much use a high margin. If possible could you give an idea about that?
Best,
Massi
The time frame Massi would depend on the type of market that you are trading so I wouldn’t just want to give you an end all be all number to use.
Is it possible for me to trade futures even if I am not an american citizen?
Yes of course Axel. There are no issues with that at all
Hello Marcello,
My name is Will. I have been trading for about 4 years now. I started with stocks, then moved to options on Biotechs. Now, I am looking to focus only on day trading futures. I have been developing my strategy for the /es for the past few weeks and testing it in my paper account now. So far i’ve had about a 70% success rate. I’m looking to start trading live here in the next few days. Just looking to meet other traders, and I am interested in traveling and trading myself. I added you on Linkedin and look forward to learning more about your academy.
Cheers,
Will
Great to hear from you Will and will be happy to meet up if you are ever in the city. Best of luck to you my friend.
Hi,
I am from US- Boston, MA and in July I quit my job to travel for a year. I’m currently working as a English fellow in Antioquia I’m about two hours from Medellin. I usually am in Medellin Sunday afternoon – Monday evening. I’m new to stocks and my experience in the sales experience. I would appreciate a chance to visit you guys in Medellin and here a little more about DTA.
Hello Marcelo just wanted to reach out and say that I’m getting ready to purchase a platform soon and start learning and trading on a demo acct but I have yet to find out about the behind the scenes science of trading futures
Ryan you can find more info from our sister site: http://www.thedaytradingacademy.com
Hello Marello,
Do you have a online one on one training or consultancy program?
Yes Denley you can contact us here: http://www.daytradingacademy.com