Trading is risky, and most day traders lose money. Ross's results are not typical. All information provided is for educational purposes and is not investment advice or buy/sell recommendations. Read our full disclaimer.

Warrior Trading Blog

Why You Don’t Need A Financial Background To Be A Day Trader

In a world where an increasing amount of trading is performed by incredibly complex and sophisticated automated programs designed by some of the greatest minds in mathematical finance, it may feel intimidating to think about trying your hand at day trading without a financial background.

Fortunately you actually have nothing to worry about.

The Secrets of Day Trading

Day trading is all about developing a strategy that works for your unique background, education and perspective on the world.

While everyone is crunching the same numbers and poring over the same analysis, as a day trader you are identifying the patterns and crucial pieces of information that everyone else is missing, and using that insight to beat the market time after time.

Let’s take a quick look at the reasons why a lack of financial background is no barrier to day trading success, and can even be an advantage!

Everything Is Automated

While contemporary financial theory may be mind-numbingly complex, very few people who actually trade, if any, understand all the technical indicators that they are using.

Modern traders know how to apply the theory to the real world, even if they can’t actually do all the math that goes into them.

Moreover, contemporary trading platforms are so advanced and easy to use that you can develop highly sophisticated strategies without needing to understand the financial theory behind many of the tools that you are using.

Find a Niche and Master It

Successful day trading is all about finding your own personal niche in the markets and becoming an absolute master. Any trader who tries to understand everything will quickly realize that they understand nothing.

Find yourself a comfortable niche and learn everything that there is to know about what moves prices there.

Even with no financial background, a little time and effort will quickly yield substantial gains that will allow you to develop a winning strategy for day trading success.

It Pays to Be an Outsider

While education and experience in finance can be helpful, it can also lead to traders making the same mistakes as everyone else and blindly following the herd, often right off a proverbial cliff.

The history of finance is full of very smart people making massive errors in judgment, despite the consensus being absolutely sure that they were right.

Being an outsider provides you with the perfect perspective for identifying these kinds of collective errors of judgment and profiting from them. Look to see what everyone else is so sure of, and then ask yourself what they are missing.

Successful day trading is all about being one step ahead of everyone else, and your outsiders perspective is the perfect tool for being able to see what everyone else is missing.

Hard Work Can Pay Off

The one key ingredient for successful day traders is hard work, no matter what their background is.  You have to study and put in the hard work of sitting and watching the markets for thousands of hours.  It’s not going to happen overnight, it takes a long time to learn to trade for most people.

Take the time to invest in a day trading course, and you will quickly learn the secret insights and perspectives that allow financial outsiders to consistently beat the smartest people in the market, all without ever taking a class in finance or having a career with a financial background.  This can help speed up your learning curve, but doesn’t necessarily speed up the path to profitability.