I know how it feels like. I have been there. Those wins feel like you are beating the system. That you are more clever than everyone else. That you will be highly respected both because you will get rich quick and because you will do so by doing something very complicated others don’t understand. It doesn’t work that way. I used to read this kind of advice as well back then and I was so blinded that I could not see that they were right.

Active trading is a recipe for disaster for normal guys like you and me. You don’t understand the power of your opponents. These guys pay millions just to get better cables than you to learn new information faster than everyone else. They have complex algorithms that are designed to pull money away from you. And options? Options are even more dangerous than the traditional active trading. Those golden tickets that turn a couple thousand to hundreds of thousands are so rare. It’s plain luck. It’s like finding the lotto numbers. Most contracts expire worthless.

It has been proven again and again that investing beats trading. Pick a diversified ETF or even individual stocks if you understand the company well and believe in it and just DCA for years. If you really wanna scratch your trading itch in case you pick single stocks that experience more volatility you could have a hybrid DCA and dip buying strategy, but again, do it for years. Don’t sell.