A little over 2 years ago, I met Kunal Desai on Twitter. Pretty quickly I found out this was a guy to continue tracking as he easily made me thousands of dollars in just a couple of days based off his stock picks. Flash-forward a couple years later and now Kunal is one of the most followed stock traders on Twitter and is co-founder of stock trading community, BullsOnWallstreet.
I was surprised to find out that Kunal actually had a full-time job as the guy was spitting out stock picks every 2 seconds; however, now he has left the job behind and has officially become a full-time trader.
I thought it would be interesting to ask him a couple questions on the subject of becoming a full-time trader and what made him make the jump. You can read the interview below.
1. Could you first give a little background about yourself? What got you into trading?
I got into trading during 2000 my freshman year of college. It was the end of the dotcom boom. I’d see every weasel in the country driving a 3 series BMW with a “I Love Yahoo” license plate. It immediately hit me that this was a way better option than working or trying to get good grades. So I immediately opened an account at buyandhold.com and started dabbling in some stocks.
As pretty much everybody – especially at that tailend of the dotcom boom – I did very well trading technology stocks. I had built myself up quite a bankroll and then preceded to give back 1/2 my gains in March when the market tanked. That summer my parents went to India and left me home alone so I stopped trading to have a 90 day party!
I still continued to trade in college but the late 2000-2003 was a very tough environment for a new trader especially one that knew nothing about technical analysis, risk management, and position management. At that time I would see Nortel Networks at 30 cents and think it was cheap so that was my basis of my buying. I built and lost a ton of bankrolls in those 3 years trying to game the market.
2. What made you believe you were ready to jump into becoming a full-time trader?
Even though I had always had a fulltime job I considered myself a fulltime trader during that time as I would trade 10-30x a week. But I knew I needed to be a fulltime trader when I got to the point where I was getting pumped to go to work but the reason I was pumped was to trade stocks while at work.
However, I knew I was ready as I had navigated both 2007-2009 markets with great success. Like many MOMO traders 2008 was a fantastic trading year as was 2009.
A lot of people say that you shouldn’t be a fulltime trader until you have 1 year of expenses in cash and X amount of dollars for bankroll and X amount of years of consistent success. That’s all baloney scraps right there. You should trade fulltime when it becomes the only thing that you can think about during the day. When you dream of it during your sleep. Thats when you know.
3. What have you liked the most about becoming a full-time trader?
Best part of trading is being in control of your own destiny. You choose your income on however much it is that you want to make. Followed by a close second: not having to shower and being able to sit around in your underwear all day.
4. What don’t you like about full-time trading? What is probably the most common misconception about the “fabulous” life of full-time trading?
Probably the biggest misconception of trading is that when you beocme a fulltime trader people think that your not working or dont have a job. Trading is a grind. Especially day-trading. Everyday is a battle.
The hours are not 9:30-4pm. Your hours are 7am to 7pm. The research and the prep time matches the amount of hours you trade. But in the end it is a fabulous life. With smartphones, laptops, ipod/pad thingies you can trade from anywhere. This summer I’ve gone all over the place to do things but I never missed any trading. You can always be connected.
5. Like I am sure it was with you, when I started trading there was no Twitter and there was definitely nowhere near the amount of blogs and media as there are today. Overall, do you think this has made learning to trade easier or harder for new traders?
Learning to trade I feel has become a bit easier just due to the wealth of knowledge on the net these days. You can find amazing resources to teach, track, and replicate investments. When I started all I could find was msn.com and I’d follow the picks of the crazy moustached man they call Jim Jubak. Does that look like a guy you want to follow?!
The one negative about all this information out there is that it can prey upon people who are looking for the holy grail or some magic bullet. With the economy the way it is a lot of people are struggling and search for something..anything…and its easy to fall in traps.
6. We already know what your best advice to a stock trader would be, but what would be some words of wisdom to somebody who is specifically looking into becoming a full-time trader?
If you want to becomea fulltime trader someday. I personally would find a mentor. This can shave years off your timeline.
There are so many aspects of trading and analyzing stocks/market that are not written about in books that really havent been conceptualized in a concrete way. Often I look at a stock and I just know that its gonna go. But there is no technical setup it mgiht be an anti-setup but for some reason there are things in the market that clicking and you see the ticker flash and it gives you that look. Every trader knows that look. Only a beautiful women or a beautiful stock can give you that look. So you either got to be a player or an amazing trader to figure it out.
Having a trader to teach you will save you those bankrolls you lose in the beginning. See new traders lose their rolls because they focus on picking stocks and entries when a pro is focused 80% on risk management. John Welsh is the best daytrader I have seen and he has a 50% win rate, yet he can go for 20-30% returns in 1 month. Plus the guy has a killer faux hawk. Its all based on risk/reward ratios
7. Finally, as everybody who follows you on Twitter knows, you are part of BullsonWallstreet. Briefly, could you tell the readers what that project is about and what we can expect in the near future with it?
BullsOnWallstreet – we are going to have a great 2011. We are adding in tons of features onto our website that will make it very interactive for our users. We have developed a great partnership with OptionsExpress where our very own Leigh Jones aka @coppersl will be speaking and teaching at some of their events. The first one will be in Kanasas City on OCT 9th!
Awesome. I want to thank Kunal again for taking the time to answer these questions make sure you follow him on Twitter and check out BullsOnWallStreet.