Day Trader Meetup Review (Part 1)

A couple months ago I went to a new Meetup for day traders. This is only the second such group I have seen in the state. The other one has a few hundred members but has been inactive for years. The organizers are franchisees of a well-known national trading school that I believe to be a spam-filled money pit. I had met the organizer of the current Meetup twice in the past so I was interested to see what he put together.

I made my way through the wintery cold on a Saturday afternoon to a quaint, Italian restaurant close to downtown. Eight attendees sat around a table with a TV monitor in the room. Two out of the eight seemed to trade stocks regularly but only the organizer was a consistent day trader.

I give props to the organizer for his humility. He claims to make some money day trading but does not profess to make a lot. He said last year he made $30K but lost $10-20K. He’s looking to become more consistent and to that end he started this group as a means to exchange ideas with others. With a smile, he describes himself as lazy: he wakes up in the morning, sets his entries/exits, and then goes back to sleep. He once told me he hits the bars most nights.

Yes, I am giving props to a guy who doesn’t make much because he prefers to be out late drinking on weeknights!

To me this represents something more insidious about the whole lot of retail traders: we aren’t perfect! Nobody is. So why do I get the marketing/advertising face of positivity, of triumph, and of ego all too often when hearing other traders talk? People sound like they’ve expertly got things all figured out. People try to sell others or to garner a following. You’ve seen me write about this time and time and time again.

No, there’s nothing particular about this organizer. He seemed to be a typical, John Doe type of guy.

If only the story would end right there…