TRANSCRIPT:
Wall Street comes alive at the sound of the opening bell, but so do thousands of individuals who buy and sell stocks from home. Once reserved for institutional traders, day trading has become increasingly accessible and popular to the everyday investor. Here to give us a better understanding of intraday trading is Steven Akin, registered investment adviser and founder of Akin Investments.
Steve, thank you so much for being here with us today. I want to dive right in. Can you explain for us what is day trading? Day trading basically is the buying and selling of stock most of the time the same issue on the same day. In other words, you go in and you take a position in a company and your hopes are to uh catch a short-term fluctuation in the valuation and cash out and basically ring the register on your profits of the day. Mhm. So buying and selling or selling and buying within the same trading day.
Yes. I want to hear about your perspective on how day trading has shifted because really you know in the late 1990s is when it became accessible for people at home with with online brokerage accounts with you know widespread internet access. So as someone who has been in this space for so long how has the landscape evolved of day trading? It's changed an awfully lot. Back when I started in the business in the early 80s, most day traders actually were on the floor of either the New York, the AMX or the Chicago Board of Options. Yeah. And the reason I bring up options is because they give an investor or trader leverage on with a short amount of capital. In other words, you don't have to expose like you're buying, you know, a thousand shares of a company. you can just buy 10 call or 10 put options which gives you the right to buy or sell that underlying asset. And I also think that the co pandemic really kind of propelled this day trading and I think with options specifically you know you heard of of the meme stocks GameStop AMC. So I think it really opened this world up to so many young people. But um there's a lot of bits and pieces of day trading. I think it's attractive because, you know, it's it's get-rich quick is is what a lot of people think. We know that's not true, but can you kind of break down the realities of day trading, what someone needs to know if they're interested in getting started?
Yeah, it's interesting you bring up meme stocks. I wrote a blog post in the middle of COVID called meme stocks on margin. And again, this goes back to the fact that uh people had time on their hands. They had money from the government. Yeah. And so that opened the gateway and I'm I'm glad to see it because I think people need to become more aware of the options that are out there. These things aren't taught in in school and there's so many resources available. You know, YouTube videos more so than ever. Um but that also like you said earlier, there's a lot of ink in the water.
We were talking earlier. So what are some resources that you would recommend for someone who's curious and learning more about day trading? You know, maybe this isn't exactly right nail on the head day trading, but it's an interesting movie that everybody can find probably on just about whoever they subscribe to for their movies. And that was a pursuit of happiness. Yeah, there's a lot of, you know, there there is so many moving parts with day trading. This is a conversation that can go on for hours. There's so much to talk about, but we'd love to have you back and continue this. Um, for trading specifically, Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas is is a great book to read. I recommend everyone reading it. Um, and also www.akininvestment.com is where you can go for Steve's blog and all this wonderful information and the great advice you have. Steve, thank you for being here and we can't wait to have you back. Oh, it's my pleasure. I appreciate the opportunity. We're back in two