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Trading Lessons

Understand Small-Account Trading

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Written by Timothy Sykes
Updated 4/17/2024 5 min read

Welcome to small-account profit opportunities.

Yesterday we watched WiSA Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: WISA) spike +300%.

Take a look at the move below, every candle represents two minutes:

WISA chart intraday, 2-minute candles Source: StocksToTrade

It was a perfect small-account profit opportunity.

  • The price never traded above $10.
  • We can take the meat of the move for safer profits.
    • Forget about 100%. Traders can snag a cool 10% or 20% and move to the next runner.

Not familiar with this process? I’m not surprised …

Wall Street doesn’t want us to make our own money in the stock market. It makes perfect sense: People who don’t know how to trade will give their money to a hedge fund. Then Wall Street can use that money to make more money while taking a cut for themselves.

But with a hedge fund, you’re lucky to make 20% on the year …

For small-account traders, that’s our goal in a single day.

I snagged a 9.2% profit from WISA yesterday morning. It only took me a few minutes.* See my trade notes below, with a starting stake of $8,760:

Source: Profitly

Yes … I can teach you how to do this.

My Process For Profits

© Millionaire Media, LLC

The most volatile stocks in the market, the kind that are perfect for small-account traders, they like to follow popular trading patterns.

I noticed this common framework over two decades ago when I was still in college. And it still exists all these years later.

Stocks can follow this framework because people are predictable during times of high stress. Like when they’ve got a few thousand dollars in a stock spiking +100% intraday.

The traders who recognize these common patterns are free to take profits.

Burn this framework into your brain.

Now, I wish trading was that simple: Learn the framework and you’re good to go. But if it was that easy, we’d all be millionaires.

Remember, Wall Street doesn’t want us to make our own money. As a result, there are a few other barriers to entry.

For example, do you know anything about:

  • Trading volume.
  • Float size.
  • Float rotation.
  • The right brokerage accounts.
  • Sector momentum.
  • Short squeezes.
  • Classic pump and dumps.
  • Trading with margin.
  • Market v.s. limit orders.
  • The PDT rule.
  • Premarket and after hours.
  • Liquidity.
  • The hottest stock catalysts.

Yeah …

Don’t get overwhelmed.

I’m here to guide you through these murky waters. And I’ve helped other students before you.

Thus far, I have over 30 students who crossed the $1 million milestone. And there are more on the way! See my video below:

Everything You Need:

© Millionaire Media, LLC

My millionaire student, Matt Monaco, helped me film a bootcamp with everything new traders need to know.

Matt started where you are:

He was a square-one trader with very little market knowledge.

He went through the wringer and came out victorious on the other side. Together, we were able to cover EVERYTHING a new trader needs to know to succeed in this niche.

It’s called the 30-Day Bootcamp. One video for every day.

If you have enough time, watch them all at once. Rewatch them if you want to. This is essential market knowledge for small-cap traders:

The 30-Day Trading Bootcamp.

Monaco and I cover all of the basics behind small-account profits. And we lay a solid bedrock of information that traders can build their careers on top of.

That’s not all …

I sat down with Monaco recently to bring traders up to speed in the current 2024 market. There are profit opportunities ripping higher every week.

The 30-Day Bootcamp comes first! Digest that information before I release the newest market update. It will help everything make sense!

See my Tweet below:

Cheers.

*Past performance does not indicate future results


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Author card Timothy Sykes picture

Timothy Sykes

Tim Sykes is a penny stock trader and teacher who became a self-made millionaire by the age of 22 by trading $12,415 of bar mitzvah money. After becoming disenchanted with the hedge fund world, he established the Tim Sykes Trading Challenge to teach aspiring traders how to follow his trading strategies. He’s been featured in a variety of media outlets including CNN, Larry King, Steve Harvey, Forbes, Men’s Journal, and more. He’s also an active philanthropist and environmental activist, a co-founder of Karmagawa, and has donated millions of dollars to charity. Read More

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* Results are not typical and will vary from person to person. Making money trading stocks takes time, dedication, and hard work. There are inherent risks involved with investing in the stock market, including the loss of your investment. Past performance in the market is not indicative of future results. Any investment is at your own risk. See Terms of Service here

The available research on day trading suggests that most active traders lose money. Fees and overtrading are major contributors to these losses.

A 2000 study called “Trading is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors” evaluated 66,465 U.S. households that held stocks from 1991 to 1996. The households that traded most averaged an 11.4% annual return during a period where the overall market gained 17.9%. These lower returns were attributed to overconfidence.

A 2014 paper (revised 2019) titled “Learning Fast or Slow?” analyzed the complete transaction history of the Taiwan Stock Exchange between 1992 and 2006. It looked at the ongoing performance of day traders in this sample, and found that 97% of day traders can expect to lose money from trading, and more than 90% of all day trading volume can be traced to investors who predictably lose money. Additionally, it tied the behavior of gamblers and drivers who get more speeding tickets to overtrading, and cited studies showing that legalized gambling has an inverse effect on trading volume.

A 2019 research study (revised 2020) called “Day Trading for a Living?” observed 19,646 Brazilian futures contract traders who started day trading from 2013 to 2015, and recorded two years of their trading activity. The study authors found that 97% of traders with more than 300 days actively trading lost money, and only 1.1% earned more than the Brazilian minimum wage ($16 USD per day). They hypothesized that the greater returns shown in previous studies did not differentiate between frequent day traders and those who traded rarely, and that more frequent trading activity decreases the chance of profitability.

These studies show the wide variance of the available data on day trading profitability. One thing that seems clear from the research is that most day traders lose money .

Millionaire Media 66 W Flagler St. Ste. 900 Miami, FL 33130 United States (888) 878-3621 This is for information purposes only as Millionaire Media LLC nor Timothy Sykes is registered as a securities broker-dealer or an investment adviser. No information herein is intended as securities brokerage, investment, tax, accounting or legal advice, as an offer or solicitation of an offer to sell or buy, or as an endorsement, recommendation or sponsorship of any company, security or fund. Millionaire Media LLC and Timothy Sykes cannot and does not assess, verify or guarantee the adequacy, accuracy or completeness of any information, the suitability or profitability of any particular investment, or the potential value of any investment or informational source. The reader bears responsibility for his/her own investment research and decisions, should seek the advice of a qualified securities professional before making any investment, and investigate and fully understand any and all risks before investing. Millionaire Media LLC and Timothy Sykes in no way warrants the solvency, financial condition, or investment advisability of any of the securities mentioned in communications or websites. In addition, Millionaire Media LLC and Timothy Sykes accepts no liability whatsoever for any direct or consequential loss arising from any use of this information. This information is not intended to be used as the sole basis of any investment decision, nor should it be construed as advice designed to meet the investment needs of any particular investor. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future returns.

Citations for Disclaimer

Barber, Brad M. and Odean, Terrance, Trading is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors. Available at SSRN: “Day Trading for a Living?”

Barber, Brad M. and Lee, Yi-Tsung and Liu, Yu-Jane and Odean, Terrance and Zhang, Ke, Learning Fast or Slow? (May 28, 2019). Forthcoming: Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Available at SSRN: “https://ssrn.com/abstract=2535636”

Chague, Fernando and De-Losso, Rodrigo and Giovannetti, Bruno, Day Trading for a Living? (June 11, 2020). Available at SSRN: “https://ssrn.com/abstract=3423101”