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Have you ever seen traders post how they’ve made so much money day trading in just a few minutes, but wonder why it takes you several hours to prepare yourself?
You’re probably looking at master day traders. The amount of time you spend working as a day trader really depends on your level of experience.
As mentioned before, depending the day trader level of experience will determine how many hours they work.
There are 4 phases that a trader goes through:
Each phase, has an average of how many hours that day trader spends.
Let’s go over each phase on how much time a day trader may spend, what activities they spend a lot of time in, and what the goal for each phase is.
In beginner phase, the day trader spends about 6 to 8 hours of work per day. This early in the day trading phase is where you spend a lot of time building your knowledge base.
You learn about different reversal patterns, the basic of options, price action, supply and demand zones, and much more.
Even though this phase is some of the most demanding phases in hours spent, it’s actually one of the shortest in length wise.
The next phase is the intermediate phase. This is where a day trader spends 3 to 6 work hours per day.
During this phase you spend a lot building the foundation of your risk management, position sizing, and trading plan. You also start experimenting with small amounts of money, with the goal of being consistent on all the activities above.
Even though a day trader spends less amount of work hours in a day, this phase can last the longest between months to years.
This is because you have to learn about controlling your emotions. Trading with stress and emotions will dictate your trading plan, and position sizing, thus resulting to bad risk management skills.
The third phase in a day trader lifecycle is the expert phase. At this point of your day trading career, you’ll spend about 1 to 3 hours per day working.
A lot of the time is now spend learning to manage larger amount of trades, analyzing market sentiment and structure, and of course monitoring your day trades.
The primary goal at this point, is continue your consistency from the intermediate phase but also grow your account.
The final phase is a master day trader. At this point of day trading, you’ve perfected executing your trading plan, know how to control your emotions, and follow your risk management to a tee.
You do all of this like it’s second nature, and now you only spend less than hour of work. You know what you’re looking for, and you just execute.
These times are just average estimates. The amount of time you spend day trading will vary per individual goals, experience, and trading style. However, you now a rough general idea of how many hours day trader works at different levels of experience.