No Money? Here’s how you can still play stocks!
Written By: Nick Nguyen | Read full profile
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If I had learned the ins-and-outs of trading stocks when I was in high school...boy I’d be rich today. I can’t tell you how badly I wish I had the time and discipline to sit down and learn how to trade options.
I’ve literally been watching people on Youtube talk about credit and debit spreads and raking in $100 a day. That’s more than half of what I make from my day job...and they did it in a couple of hours!
But now that I have *some* time, and I’m really interested in playing with options, I’ve hit a new obstacle - my wallet’s empty. That’s right, I’m still living like a broke college student, barely scraping by and I still can’t afford to buy x-mas gifts for my loved ones.
Good thing there’s a way to get around it! PAPER TRADING! Just like it sounds, it’s trading stocks and options...but with “paper money.” There are actually quite a few platforms out there that offer this feature, but my personal favorite is TD Ameritrade’s Paper Money on their Think or Swim (ToS) platform.
This is one of the most widely used platforms out there and for good reason too! There’s a steep learning curve, but once you get it down, you’ll be able to trade like even the best day traders!
All I cared about though was using their options features. After getting burned really badly on two call options I bought back in April (you can read about that and what NOT to do in my other blog post here), I was so scared. $500 just vanished because I was being stupid and playing with something I didn’t know how to do. I might as well have just thrown that money in the trash.
Anyways, I’m here to tell you that you can learn how to trade stocks right now for FREE. That’s right, FREE. You can check out our video on how to open a Paper Money account with TD Ameritrade here, but the idea is, open up that account, and poof! You have $200,000 in paper money to make trades, learn how to place orders, and lose virtual money without feeling bad!
Luckily, if you blow up that account, you can just reset it. But hopefully, you’ll start to see some patterns and find your groove! Experiment now, so you don’t blow $500 like I did. And did I mention, when you apply for Options trading in your account, paper trading counts as experience too? More on that in our next blog.
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