How much money do day traders make?
Is it really possible to make money from trading in the stock market?
Is it a real career or… just a get rich quick scheme?
In this video, I’m going to be answering all of the above questions, and tell you exactly…
how much money I make as a full time day trader in 2021.
Both the returns in percentage of account capital, as well as my actual broker statements.
And I’m just going to be honest with you here…
I'm a little nervous making this video… because eh… the tax man is probably watching.
Just kidding, it's because I don’t want my parents to see this and demand a bigger
chinese new year red pocket.
Seriously this concern is very real… the amount of money in the red envelope has TO
increase every year, or else I would be failing my parents, grandparents, and all my ancestors
from… the Qing Dynasty.
All jokes aside, I’m a little nervous making this video about day trading profits, Because
if you've seen any day trading videos at all on YouTube, you’d know there are some really
outrageous and exaggerated videos calling day trading easy, how you can make $1000 quick
in your underwear in 5 min, it's a piece of cake…
And that just couldn't be further from the truth.
I will tell you first hand that I had to lose a lot of money when I first started as a beginner
day trader.
Those were some very expensive lessons, but looking back now, they were very important
tuition I had to pay to the stock market in order to get to where I am now.
I just want to disclose to you that I was very much a losing trader in my first two
years of trading.
I was part of the 90% of traders who lose money day trading.
And this video is not meant to brag or show off my profits, but rather to present to you,
and perhaps many who are curious about the markets, and new to trading, a realistic,
no BS view of what it takes to really become a consistently profitable day trader.
I had to lose for a long time, and put in a lot of hard work to get to where I am today.
So if you appreciate the full transparency here, please do me a huge favor by clicking
the like button at the bottom of the video.
That will help ease some of my nerves making this video and just show me that you as a
viewer support this kind of honest video when it comes day trading in the stock market.
Thank you so much in advance.
And without further adieu, let me share with you how much I’ve made day trading so far
in 2021.
Let’s start with portfolio returns in terms of percentage, because I know many of my long
time subscribers care more about that than seeing the actual number in P&L.
And I definitely want to respect your wishes.
Like I preach all the time on this channel.
It takes money to make money in this business.
Day trading is a business that requires you to learn how to lose, and manage that risk.
Everyone’s wins and losses are relative to their very own account size in day trading.
If you are making 100, a day consistently with a $5000 account, that's amazing.
But for someone who is using 100 times your share size, and making a couple thousand usually
per day, their big win would be maybe a twenty-thirty grand win.
But again at the same time, their small loss might be 2k, and a big loss would probably
be in their five figures.
The point i'm trying to make is, don’t compare your chapter 1 to someone else's chapter 20.
Everyone's big wins and losses are relative to their share size and account capital.
Hopefully you understand that, and this is the reason we are starting with percentage
return first.
I have three trading accounts in total, one being a brand new one I opened in February.
In January I grew the smallest of my accounts bty 24.42%.
And when I say these percentage returns, these are net of locate fees, commissions, any mis
broker trading platform fees.
For the second account, the return was 34.18%.
Now in February, my first trading account was actually negative.
I lost -8.45%.
But my second account, being the bigger account, grew by 73.46%.
And I also opened a brand new account in the beginning of Feb for the purpose of swing
trading, and grew this third account by 18.05%
I understand why many people care more about the percentage return on capital, instead
of the actual P&L numbers.
Because everyone trades different account sizes, a trader trading a $1000 account making
$500 in a month would be the same 50% return as another trader who makes $50,000 on a $100K
account.
So I get that perspective.
But I just want to make it clear that I talk about percentage returns from trading accounts,
by no means am I saying I go all in with my entire account on every single day.
In fact, I strongly recommend against doing that.
Even though I have three trading accounts, most days I just use my main day trading broker,
Cobra trading this one being the second account I mentioned earlier.
And I open up my first, and third broker platform only when there’s specific set ups and opportunities
in the market.
And most times overnight, I’m all cash with no positions at all.
That’s just the nature of day trading.
Compared to my trading accounts, my long term investing portfolio is down about 2% year
to date in 2021.
And that is from being in the markets at all times.
Again, day trading and investing are completely different and should not be mixed together
at all, they are completely different.
Day trading is a business for short term gains, investing is for long term valuation increase
and retirement….
And perhaps to pay for my future alimony.
Now that we got the percentage growth of my trading capital down, let's take a look at
my actual broker statements.
Because after all sure growing 30%return in one month sounds nice and all, but if my trading
account is only $1K. I can’t really live on $300 a month.
I mean I live in Vancouver, one of the most expensive cities to live in North America
where a closet in downtown costs $1500 a month to rent.
Now before I show you my broker statement, I want to make this very clear.
I do not do any sort of live streaming, whether it's on YouTube or any other platforms.
I do not screen share, I do not issue alerts to buy or sell to thousands of followers on
social media or in my very own HT Trading Community.
In fact, if you’ve been a long time viewer of this channel here, you would probably know
why copy trading or buy & sell alerts are something I'm strongly against.
My point is, I would be able to make the profits I do from trading if I was completely alone,
and with zero followers anywhere.
There’s very good reasons to clarify that, and I'm sure the more experienced traders
watching this video would understand what I’m talking about.
If you’re brand new to day trading in the markets, and this what I just said doesn’t
make sense.
Then you’ll find out one day, or just read through the comments below.
Okay no with all the disclaimers aside let’s take a look at my broker statements.
If you prefer to skip this part, you can go to this timestamp below.
Mom, and my future husband, if you’re watching this video, you both should definitely skip
this part.
Let’s look at my first trading account at Centerpoint securities.
This is not my main day trading account, in fact, this is the smallest trading account
in terms of trading capital.
You can see in January this account did about $14,598, after all fees would be net $12,588.30.
Let’s move on to the second account, which is my main brokerage account for day trading
at Cobra Trading.
And I’m not going to lie, their monthly statements are difficult to read.
So bear with me here.
And if you’ve watched this far and still haven’t liked the video yet, what are you
doing man, please, give your girl some support for spilling the tea.
This is all real broker statements.
So if we go to Jan 2021, you can see the opening balance 134,545, and the closing balance of
130,545.
Before you start getting angry at me and yell
“omg humbled trader….
You actually lost money instead of making 34.18% like you said earlier.
You are a liar.
I knew day trading was a scam.”
I wired out some money in the middle of Jan 2021 so I can eat and survive for the rest
of the year in this expensive city Vancouver okay?
So if you follow my scrolling down the statement here, you will see on Jan 13, 2021, a $50,000
disbursement wire, out of my account, and into my mother’s red envelope.
Just kidding, not all of it, just a little bit, or most of it.
And there are no deposits at all this month as you can see for the rest of the statement.
A deposit or account funding wout look like this from August of 2020 last year, it would
say cash receipt for any money added to the trading account.
So the closing balance on the account is $130,545.95.
Adding the $50,000 wireout and subtracting the starting balance of $134,552.
That gives a total net profit of $45,993.94.
And to be honest, I really underperformed this month in January 2021.
I had some pretty big losses in the middle of the month that I’m not happy about, and
I was dealing with some stress in my personal life that was negatively affecting my trading
performance in the market.
Like I’ve always mentioned in this channel, trading requires not just financial capital,
but also mental capital as well.
So the total January profit net of all fees comes to $58,582.24.
For the two trading accounts.
Let’s move onto next month in February 2021, the first account at Centerpoint was a loss
of -$3,895.25.
The second account statement at Cobra Trading, my main trading brokerage account , was finally
more straightforward this month.
Scrolling down here you can see there is no additional funds added, nor withdrawals.
So opening balance 130,545.95, closing balance 226,444.56.
That gives a total of $95,898.62 net profit.
In February is also when I opened a brand new account at Interactive Brokers because
of a lot
of opportunities in the market for going long… yes that's right, buying the Wall St bet stocks
such as Gamestop, AMC, Koss etc.
I actually still make more money going long than short.
As you may know, IBKR does not have a lot of shorts available for hard to borrow stocks,
especially if they were small caps.
So that brings us to a total of around $146,000 net
of all fees for the month of February
I don’t have the official broker statements for March so far because they don’t come
out until early April and it’s only the end of March right now, but this is how I’m
doing so far on my Tradervue account.
And I’m sure there will be people questioning the legitimacy of all these brokers.
All of them, Centerpoint Cobra Trading, and INteractive brokers based in the United States
are members of FINRA, SIPC.
And you would not see funding or cash receipts on the broker statement if they were paper
trading accounts/
Like I’ve said in my past videos, I’ve definitely had a lot of reservations from
posting my statements or trading pnls in the past.
It is a personal thing and whether you or I, or anyone else online should share their
trading performance, it’s nobody else’s decision but their own.
But I want to make sure, if and when I do share my broker statements, I am not just
showing the good, but also the bad and ugly as well.
Which is why I introduced this video in the beginning the way I did.
I’d never want to come across as if Im bragging or being really cocky about my profits.
Because let’s be real, i know plenty of day traders who make 2, 3 or 10 times more
than me.
And I find them extremely inspiring.
I am sure i’ll get there one day, but at my own pace.
No i'm not just going to YOLO and add a 0 to all my share sizes.
We should never compare our chapter 1 or chapter 10, to someone else’s chapter 20.
What’s important is that day trading could indeed, be a very profitable career for the
long run, if you can wake up.
stop trying to find shortcuts such as following chat room alerts, and copy trading or any
other get rich quick schemes.
Instead, learn to plan your trades, collect screen time, and accept that you’re going
to have to pay market tuition in order to learn.
People often overestimate how much they can do in six months, but underestimate what they
can achieve in 1 or 2 years.
When I opened my first trading account in late 2014, I never would have thought I’d
be able to make consistent profits like this.
Am I making the most money from trading out there?
No definitely not.
But this is more than enough for me.
Even if I stop doing YouTube today, and stop running my own trading community, I’d still
be able to make a very comfortable living out of day trading on my own.
You are seeing the result 6 years later, but what you do not see are all the late nights
I’ve pulled studying, charting, journaling my trades, and going to the office late, dozing
off at work, getting ghosted by all the boys who didn't want to talk to me because I was
too “boring” or don’t dress “fancy” enough, or can’t go to Coachella or EDC
VIP like all the other “LA girls”.
Well, guess what, after all the money i’ve made from day trading, I could afford all
the VIP tickets I want… and I still haven't gone once… like seriously not even once.
All I really need nowadays is to be able to go to a ramen restaurant, and when the cashier
asked me if I wanted extra Chashu pork for $4, I want to be able to say hell yes, without
a second of hesitation.
To me, that's a definition of a good life.
If you enjoyed this video so far, please make sure to drop a like at the bottom of the video.
I’d really appreciate it.
If you want to find more day trading education videos both free and premium, you can find
links in the description below.
I’m the Humbled Trader, thank you guys for watching as always, and I’ll see you next
time.