If you’re seriously considering day trading, whether as a second income or a main career, you need to be prepared. One way to help prepare yourself for this challenging endeavor is with a day trading school.
What Day Trading Schools Offer
Each school may have slightly different offerings, but many of them offer things like online courses, group sessions, webinars, personal consultations or mentorship programs. Every school will specialize on a different focus — the forex market, stocks or futures — so it is important to choose your greatest area of interest or aptitude. Of course each school will vary quite a bit on quality, price, intensity and support, so you will need to keep this in mind as you are choosing the right school for your needs.
Is It Worth The Money?
Similar to many other purchases or investments, one of the first things you may look at when researching day trading schools is the cost. While this is an important factor, there are other potentially more important factors to consider, especially in this field. This is a complicated, high-risk type of trading; if you don’t have a solid foundation when you enter into this type of trading you can easily lose more than the cost of a good, reputable school in a short period of time. Keep in mind, the minimum stock trading account balance is $25,000. Spending $5,000 or more to get a solid foundation may actually save you money in the long run, if it can keep you from making costly mistakes.
What to Look For
You want to find a school that will offer you a solid foundation of knowledge, as well as some form of mentorship and support. Coverage in these three areas is important for you success, and for you to get your money’s worth from the school.
One of the first things you’ll want to gain from a day trading school is a solid base of knowledge in the particular field of interest, whether that interest is in penny stocks or the forex market. This includes strategies specific to that type of trading, things to watch for and things to avoid. While you can learn this from doing your own research, a school can help broaden your knowledge base.
The second, and arguably more important, thing you’ll want to gain from a school is mentoring. This can be in the form of personal coaching or it can even be done through attending webinars. Mentoring provides an outside perspective of your trading that can help you see your own mistakes. An outside observer is often able to quickly see mistakes and help correct them.
These two stages should help you reach a comfort level, and even more importantly, they should help you start to become profitable. After this you’ll be able to benefit from ongoing support. This can help keep keep you on track, and keep you from slipping into a bad habits. Support may come in the form of emails, webinars or even forums where traders can interact and help each other.