Starting a Trading Career
Starting a career in trading can be daunting, but the potential rewards make all the time and effort you put in worth it. In order to start your journey to becoming a successful stock trader, you need to learn how the industry works and what type of duties and tasks you may come across along the way. The MentorME team have put together a breakdown of everything you might need to know to start your trading career.
What work is done during a trading career?
Trading stock can be beneficial to you or both you and your future clients. You can either trade stocks for your own portfolio and gains or trade stocks for consumers and receive a commission on any profits made.
People just starting their trading career, whether it be crypto, forex or stocks, should know that the main themes within the industry are prediction and timing. If you can accurately predict what the price of a stock will be in the future, you can make trades in order to make profits from this movement in price. And if you make trade at the right time, you can maximise your profits fully.
As the stock and crypto markets can sometimes be volatile, your trading strategy will change from day to day. Although each day can be different, there are some duties you will carry out during your trading career that will most likely stay the same:
- Speaking with clients
- Making quick decisions after analysing data
- Finalising trades over online or on the phone
- Making trades and deals
- Presenting ideas and projections to your clients
Types of trading
Delivery trading
Delivery trading is a type of long-term trading and is seen as one of the most reliable and least risky ways of investing in stock and the stock market. Delivery trading is the most popular form of trading within the stock market. Traders and investors do delivery trading with the intention of holding onto a stock for a long period of time.
Positional trading
Just like delivery trading, positional trading is a form of investing that relies on investors to hold onto stocks for a long period of time. This form of trading doesn’t rely on making investments based on small changes in the market like day trading. Profits are only made when there are substantial rises in the price of the stock that has been invested in.
Technical trading
Technical market analysis is used with the technical trading type. This form of investing requires traders to understand why the price of a stock changes, and make appropriate investments in order to maximise profits.
Fundamental trading
Fundamental trading is very much about how a business is performing and what level of growth is estimated for the company in the future. So this requires a trader to keep up to date with any events related to the company that could bring the price of its stop up or down.
Swing trading
The more time that passes, the more opportunity a stock has to change in price. Swing trading utilises the swings in prices of stock over the course of a few days. With this marketing type, investors look to hold a stock for more than one day, and sell it once its price has reached its maximum momentum.
Forex Trading
Forex trading is when you trade money in different forms of international currencies, in order to make a profit. In all cases of Forex trading, you will be exchanging one currency for another. A Forex trader will need to speculate the price of certain currencies and initiate trades when one’s value has risen and the other’s has fallen.
Crypto Trading
Like Forex trading, Crypto traders will exchange one currency for another, but in this case, with digital currencies. This requires intimate knowledge of different crypto assets and the expertise to use crypto exchanges to swap or sell cryptocurrencies. There are cryptocurrencies that are worth thousands as well as ones worth just pennies, but with the right trades you can make big profits regardless of the price of a full crypto coin.
Trading career skill set
- Confidence in your analytical skills
- Able to work with quantitative data or large sums of money
- Great at communicating
- An active interest in how the stock market works
- A strong motivation to learn and adapt
How do I start my trading career?
The first step in your trading career is to get experience, and get used to how trading will work. Another great way to start your trading career is to get advice and guidance from someone who is actively in the trading space. Get in touch with one of our trading and investing mentors to jump start your trading career:
