Trading for tuition?
Hey buds,
I'm currently a senior in high school right now who's thinking of going to UIUC's business school. Unfortunately, I would have to pay a hefty amount of tuition, and I really don't want to be bogged down by student debt. So I've been thinking of a pretty risky idea to try and help alleviate the potential debt I might have to take on: day trading.
It's a crazy idea, but I need to know the viability of it. I've been obsessed with the markets for the past 2 years, and I've shadowed traders at a prop trading firm this past summer, where I got a chance to use a futures-trading simulator they had. I saw that prop trading can be really profitable, but even more volatile.
So, assuming I ran with this idea, how much starting capital would I need to start day trading? I was thinking of beginning to trade with equities, so what software would be best for this?
Again, huge risk involved, but any other advice would be helpful. A part-time job would be safer, but nowhere near as fun and helpful ( prospective finance major) as trading.
Thanks.
Its viable but honestly its dangerous to place something that important in the hands of trading. Plus how much knowledge/ experience do you have trading capital?
Risky business buddy. (I wouldn't suggest it) Oanda.com comes to mind (Others maybe there too)
Don't do it.
I don't know UIUC too well I'm guessing that in-state tuition in around $10k a year and OOS is more like $25K a year. So you need somewhere around $50-$120K for tuition/books.
So how much do you need? You should start with $50K in your brokerage account. And then close the account and put the money in a tuition account where it can only be drawn on for educational purposes.
The problem is that what you're proposing is extremely dangerous. If day-trading was so easy, everyone would do it and make enough to live on. But most people don't because you can get wiped out in a very short time. If this was a bonus/you didn't need this money, then have at it. Unfortunately, if you day-trade and lose your money, you're done. No more school, unless you want to take out student loans. And day-trading will take a lot of time that you should be devoting to class/learning about what you want to do.
So you can either bite the bullet and use the money that you otherwise would have traded with and take out a smaller loan and study your ass off so you can work in as a trader after school (should take two years max to pay off the loan if you tighten your belt for a little while), or you trade it and lose it and have to take out a larger loan and hopefully you've made good enough grade to not blow any chance of you being in S&T after school. It's possible you could make enough, but you won't stop there so just don't do it.
Many college kids have dreams of hitting it big trading. No one ever succeeds. Not only that, I have a gut feeling there is market turmoil ahead that's going to cause a lot of day traders to lose their shirts.
Play poker or start a business instead. Both have higher probabilities of being profitable.
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