Day traders say trading outside their day jobs can be like living a double life.
Many who aspire to go full-time say they’ve developed strategies to balance work with their side hustle.
Their top tips included setting stop losses, trading the premarket, and trading overnight.
Flicking through multiple screens. Checking the markets at 1 a.m. Trading from the bathroom stall at work.
Being a day trader isn’t easy — particularly if you’re a trader who still supports yourself with a regular 9-5 day job — people living the life told me after work at a day trader happy hour in New York’s Financial District.
The event, hosted by trading education and mentorship company BullMentor, is a relatively new phenomenon, but it’s gaining popularity as a growing number of people pursue what they see as a more modern version of the American dream: to one day quit their jobs and support themselves primarily by trading the market.
That simply isn’t the reality for most day traders, many of whom are in the red or only quasi-profitable. While many claim their ultimate goal is to trade full-time, fewer than 40% of traders report being able to do so, according to a survey conducted by the trading company Quantified Strategies this year.
Five people, many of whom walked into the bar still dressed for the workday, told me about the arsenal of strategies they had developed to manage the stress of living their double life, which frequently conflicts with work hours. Their playbook largely revolves around automating trades, capitalizing on their office’s work-from-home policy, and, among the most determined traders, waking up in the dead of the night to try to lock in some gains before they have to get up for work.
Melissa Avutan, the CEO of Bull Mentor and a day trader who worked in analytics, said she believed the best approach was what she calls a “set-it-and-forget-it” method. In a typical day, she’ll do research during the premarket and purchase 1-day option contracts or set stop losses on specific trades, which automatically sell a position to avoid further losses.
Avutan, who has been trading for around two years, said she believed it was “insane” to try to trade minute-by-minute during work hours, though she’s aware of some people who do so and think they can manage the stress. She suspects most who do so are unprofitable.
Kevin Law, a 44-year-old trader who works in investment banking, said he employs a similar strategy. He’ll open short positions in the morning, go back to work, and then try not to check the markets until the following day.
He also tries to keep his expectations low, and says his biggest pro-tip is not to get greedy when making trades.
“I just try to make lunch money,” he said, adding that he was satisfied if he made as little as $30 a day.
It can be hard to hold a position without being able to check your portfolio. One trader at the event said he lost $1,800 on a stock because he was stuck in a work meeting.
Matt Brown, a 33-year-old trader in the financial services industry, says he tries to “prep” the night before by doing market research, so he’s ready to pounce on opportunities in the morning before work.
“I think it’s more about being organized and just being disciplined,” he said of his schedule, though he lamented having to let go of certain opportunities due to being at work. “It’s very much patience and something I struggle with.”
Steven Lin, a 30-year-old trader who works in financial regulation, said he frequently traded the Tokyo and Shanghai markets for several hours in the evening after his day job. Occasionally, he’s also traded in the London market, which begins around 3 a.m. New York time.
If he’s trading US-listed stocks, it’s only a proper trading day on Mondays and Fridays, the two days of the week when he’s able to work from home, he said.
Lin says balancing it all can be stressful.
“If you think about it, there is no other way out,” he said. “I want to start a family. I want to buy a house. So basically, you’re going to have to grind to get to that point. I don’t think a day job is going to cut it.”
Overnight trading is also gaining popularity. The number of US stocks traded overnight has about doubled from September 2024 through June of this year, according to data from the New York Stock Exchange.
Ricardo Saldana, a 29-year-old home health aide, says his second job as a trader begins around 12 am. He’ll attend to patients in various households from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., nap until midnight, and then start researching the market in Europe and Asia. He’ll trade from around 3 a.m. to 8 p.m. before going back to work.
He makes up for the lack of sleep by sleeping in on Fridays, which is his day off from trading.
Saldana said he tried trading during the workday in the past, but it hasn’t gone well. When he was doing an internship for a financial company, he ducked into the bathroom in spare moments to execute trades on his phone. Over several months, he blew around $100,000, a loss that took him several years to recover from.
“You can’t just have different distractions going on,” he said.
Friends and family think his schedule is strange, particularly since he doesn’t tell anyone he’s a trader. Many in his life doubt his dream of achieving financial freedom in the markets, one reason he keeps his trading under wraps.
“It’s a grind. Hopefully it turns into something where I don’t have to be a health aide anymore,” he said.
