Trading stocks in Med School

[doctorold]

Hey guys. Is there anyone who trades stocks, options or currencies for an extra income while attending Med School? Is it doable? What kind of seed money do you need? What time do you trade?
Thanks

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[Gut Shot]

Hey guys. Is there anyone who trades stocks, options or currencies for an extra income while attending Med School? Is it doable? What kind of seed money do you need? What time do you trade?
Thanks

I knew some financial whizzes in residency who traded. Well, they did up until late 2007. They don't do it anymore.

 

[link2swim06]

Probably not a hobbie you can start in med school.

If you already are doing it and are good....then you might have time to continue it depending on what grades you want to make.

 

[addy]

I used to trade currencies and stocks. It's not worth it unless you're leveraging a lot, which is possible with currencies. But also you're more likely to lose money in currency trading. There are some people who buy/sell securities every month or so or some relatively short time period and they end up making something like 1k per month or losing money but honestly the stresses/risks/opportunity cost that comes with trading is not worth it to put over top of medical school. You're looking for money, right? The best thing you can do (from a purely financial standpoint) is to focus on school and increase your income ceiling by picking a better compensating speciality...no amount of trading will match that ROI.

Edit: the 1k figure is just 2 guys I know. the other guys have either lost money or gone bust thanks to currency markets. Stick with stocks if you do this.

 

[JShephard]

I knew some financial whizzes in residency who traded. Well, they did up until late 2007. They don't do it anymore.

Lol. There are a lot of financial whizzes in an up market.

 

[JShephard]

Hey guys. Is there anyone who trades stocks, options or currencies for an extra income while attending Med School? Is it doable? What kind of seed money do you need? What time do you trade?
Thanks

It's not smart. You need to invest time to be good. Anyway, being good usually means being informed and sometimes on an illegal or insider level. Trading individual stocks is very difficult. The market has been going crazy the last few years because of the collapse, so you probably missed that train. Invest in your education so you can invest when you earn a few hundred thousand power year.

 

[HatWobble]

Day trading is a fool's game.

 

[Praefectus]

Hey guys. Is there anyone who trades stocks, options or currencies for an extra income while attending Med School? Is it doable? What kind of seed money do you need? What time do you trade?
Thanks

Don't even think about it. Hedge fund managers work 60 hours a week and 80% of them can't beat the S&P 500. If those are what the professionals can do, imagine how you'll do.

Doable. Just make sure to know the laws regarding capital gains.

Short-term capital gains are taxed at your ordinary income rate, which applies to any assets held for less than a year. Don't forget to factor in all of the money you'll lose in trading fees to your brokerage firm.

Day trading is a fool's game.

My recommendation would be to invest in a passive index fund. It has low annual fees and you'll beat an actively-traded portfolio most of the time.

 

[JShephard]

Day trading is a fool's game.

Unless you're insider trading.

 

[yesno]

I lost $10k. Now I am bankrupt. It's good to have experience. Win some lose some. I'll take revenge when I have real money to play with. But even if you do as well on your returns as the best gurus you're not going to become wealthier than somebody who just earns 50% more than you as a doctor.. Mightve been different if you started investing real money at a younger age.

 

[HatWobble]

Unless you're insider trading.

 

[HatWobble]

My recommendation would be to invest in a passive index fund. It has low annual fees and you'll beat an actively-traded portfolio most of the time.

This. Not nearly as fun, but you will make more money in the long term.

 

[xrevision]

Get a job, and take out less in student loans. You're going to have a hard time sustaining a 6.8% growth rate while investing, especially day trading.

 

[ruprecht]

Hey guys. Is there anyone who trades stocks, options or currencies for an extra income while attending Med School? Is it doable? What kind of seed money do you need? What time do you trade?
Thanks

The kind of seed money that you need is the amount you're comfortable with losing completely.

 

[ataha]

Day trading is not fun, also, unless you already have a large sum of money the small movements won't be enough to make it worth the effort. If you're trading growth biotech stocks or anything that doesn't have a good history of revenue you'll have a lot of variance.

With more reputable companies like walmart, apple, google,etc you can make your trades strictly on catalysts (positive news that comes out, that doesn't necessarily change anything immediately, i.e, 'xxxxx has plans to release a product within the next 6 months' and make like 4% per trade (which isn't worth the trouble if you have less than $10,000 to play with.)

So yeah like everyone said, don't even consider day trading. I however suggest you do your research on investing in the stock market, this is a different beast but it is less stressful because you do your homework on the company, buy it, and play the waiting game.

A lot of people made a FORTUNE when the stock market crashed half a decade ago. You just have to know what you're doing. And never ever ever ever buy a stock just because you heard it was good, or because some fancy analyst from wallstreet said it was a good buy. THAT IS GAMBLING. Always do your own homework. If you knew a school project could make or break your grade, would you let someone you don't know do it for you?

 

[dap]

Unless you are not taking out any student loans whatsoever, I would advise against putting any of your money into stocks or bonds, or writing or buying options while in medical school. If you're investing intelligently, you are looking to make reasonable gains over a long period of time, and then reinvest those. You will almost assuredly lose more money to interest in student loans than you will make on investments in the market over a period of 4 years. This is why every guide ever written on "how should I start to invest" says the #1 and #2 things you do are set up an emergency fund, and pay off debt. People don't realize that paying off debt (or, in our case, taking out less debt) is a great investment. Your return on investment is typically higher (~7% for student loans, much higher for credit card debt), and, more importantly, there is no risk involved.

If you were thinking of using the market as a primary income-generating strategy and you are under 50 and don't have a strong dividend portfolio, you're approaching it the wrong way.

 

[Kevin Baker]

Unless you are not taking out any student loans whatsoever, I would advise against putting any of your money into stocks or bonds, or writing or buying options while in medical school. If you're investing intelligently, you are looking to make reasonable gains over a long period of time, and then reinvest those. You will almost assuredly lose more money to interest in student loans than you will make on investments in the market over a period of 4 years. This is why every guide ever written on "how should I start to invest" says the #1 and #2 things you do are set up an emergency fund, and pay off debt. People don't realize that paying off debt (or, in our case, taking out less debt) is a great investment. Your return on investment is typically higher (~7% for student loans, much higher for credit card debt), and, more importantly, there is no risk involved.

If you were thinking of using the market as a primary income-generating strategy and you are under 50 and don't have a strong dividend portfolio, you're approaching it the wrong way.

Long term market average is ~9.4% with dividend reinvestment. That's a lot higher of a return than the cost of the loans we're getting. When you factor in taxes and transaction fees it's about a wash, but depending on whether you're buying and holding (negating the impact of taxes right now, allowing future growth), have a Roth, your fees, your timeframe, and what your specific loans are, investing can be a solid income generator during this time. I agree that paying off high interest rate loans should be a priority but I don't see med school loans being high interest enough to negate this, and there are a lot of loan forgiveness plans we can take advantage of. I recommend any spare income not being used to pay Grad Plus or credit card loans be dollar cost averaged into the market.

To the OP, one of my close friends who does this for a living on the exchanges said seed money has to be somewhere close to $2mln to even make an impact in day trading. A lot of expenses go towards getting special software , and there is a huge time commitment. I recommend going the buy and hold route if anything, preferably with low cost, diversified, ETFs.