All professional "traders" are regular traders since very few consider themselves "day traders".
There are no courses in the academic world that you can take that will make you or any one a trader.
To be a trader you must know how to invest, and to be a day trader you must know how to trade and yes to does take years to be a day trader
There's no easy way to become a trader, you have to spend a lot time learning the markets and the stocks in those markets. This some that is not taught in the academic world
A "day trader" is a trader with special skills (and a lot of money), and these take time and effort to learn. Yes most traders will take quick profit when they can whether it takes a few hours or a few days, but most a re willing to get into a position and wait for the price to move according to their plans.
You want to be a trader start by building and writing a written sound trading/investment plan with rules that will not only help you but more importantly protect you, mostly from yourself. Always use stops either to protect you on the down side or to lock in profits on the up side. Never trade on emotions, when emotions get involved walk away. Don’t try to out-smart the market, you’ll loose but if you always take what the market is willing to give you, you’ll be successful. Other words, you don’t trade against the trend since the market is always right. And NEVER trade on emotions, once you let emotions in your trades you will loose
Also you need A written money management program. Remember never invest 100% of your capital into any one security and never have 100% of your capital invested. Never go into a trade without knowing when and where you are going to get out of it. Never let a loss on a trade get greater than 8%-10%, always take you loss and walk away - don't loose more than you need to and don't be afraid to take the loss. Remember you never can get hurt taking a profit. Never average down, but you can average up.
Before you begin to trade you need to have sufficient trading/investment capital. Use your own money, there’s no need to go into debt so that you can trade and/or invest. Margin can be used but only with restraints, never let the account wall below 45% equity. Unless you fully understand margins you should not use it.
And finally you need a full and complete understanding of the rules & regulations of the industry.
You have a lot of work to do before you enter your first "trade" order, no of this is found in the academic world and it takes work to but all this together
I hate to break it to you, but yes, you need to spend months to years solely analyzing the stock market. The stock market is 80% street smarts and experience, and 20% luck. Analyzing the market in itself requires much more work than any course you could take in college.
Your friends are right in saying that there are no real courses you can take to learn more about the stock market. That's because those "courses" can only teach you about how the system works and what techniques some people or companies have employed, but not how to actually gain for sure (it's actually illegal to claim that a technique works, as they would need to back up that guarantee and are held liable for any losses you incur by following their techniques).
The negative comments are largely accurate. Unless you put in the effort, and spend hours upon hours learning how to trade, you will lose money. You can follow the easy route, which is NOT to day trade, and to just find blue chip companies and buy-and-hold long-term, which has minimum risk.
On a side note, I also want to mention that nobody will tell you how to day trade successfully. That's because, unless they're rich themselves, they are not qualified. And chances are, if their system works, they probably wouldn't share it, or would charge a massive premium.
In terms of fun, the only fun you get out of the stock market is thrill of successfully earning money. Inversely, if you lose money, you just get more and more discouraged.
I loved the stock market but I took a basic 101 college course on it and it just sucked the fun out of it... It was just so depressing to read the text because it was full negative comments.
I asked the question on what other classes to take and ever body said their is none. and that you have to spend a lot of time learning on your own...
Does it really take YEARS to learn? Is this ever going to be fun again? how do you interacted with others who are also interested in day trading? it's getting alittle lonely.
