Originally Posted by
Gone Flying
why? If you have 5 years til retirement and that will be your main source of income in retirement that’s one thing, but if you have 20, 30, or more years to go, what’s the harm in day trading with a % of that money? I don’t do this but I fail to see why this is “the ultimate example of a bad idea” (assuming you can afford the losses)
Because some 95% of day traders lose money and if you lose principal at a young age and lose the compounding you have to add that much more later to make it up. If you lose $20,000 from your retirement account at age 20, assuming an 8% return it costs you $800K by age 67. Big risk. As Buck said in his post, the time to gamble if you want to is much closer to retirement when you have taken advantage of compounding to build a large account and you can set aside a small play amount to try day trading. If you lose you don't hurt yourself more than a few thousand to learn if you can do it or not.