Active Investing Strategies – How To Get Started

Interested in learning about active investing strategies?

I have received numerous questions over the years about active investing versus passive investing strategies, and how one can trade in the stock market and make money.

Disclosure: Active investing is not a get rich quick scheme. Not everyone will see success with short-term trading in the stock market, this is very different from investing for the long-term, and you can lose money. I recommend doing further research on your own, as there are risks involved with stock trading. If you are interested in long-term investing, I recommend reading this.

I had the opportunity to interview Teri Ijeoma about active investing, who explains how this may be a possibility for you. If you are looking for a new career or even just a side hustle, this may be something that you want to look into.

Teri is extremely successful in her field, and teaches regular people like you and me how to make $1,000 a day with stocks.

When Teri started trading stocks nine years ago, she initially saw it as an opportunity to simply supplement her income.

However she was so successful with this side hustle that in 2017, she decided to quit her job as an assistant principal of an elementary school to travel the world and begin trading full-time.

While traveling, Teri was constantly asked to show others how she was successfully trading in the stock market, so she started an online school called Trade and Travel.

Teri received her Bachelors degree in Management Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and her Masters in Media and Communications from Dallas Theological Seminary. She was named 2018 Entrepreneur of the Year by National Black MBA Association, and was the Grand Champion of Teachable’s 2019 Creator Challenge.

Check out the interview below for more information on how to get started with active investing.

Questions about active investing strategies answered include:

• How does trading in the stock market work?
• What is the difference between active and passive investing?
• What are active strategies? Is active or passive investing better?
• How many hours does active investing take to get started?
• Is active investing real? Is it too good to be true?

And more!

How to get started with active investing strategies.

Tell me your story. What do you do? 

I teach people how to actively invest in the stock market to pay off their debt, afford to travel, and supplement their income.

That was my story. I worked in education for 10 years. In my last year, I was an assistant principal of an elementary school, and one of my best friends passed away. In that moment, I realized that life was too short. The work had been getting really stressful and I realized that I needed an exit strategy.

I had been investing as a hobby and a side hustle for years, and so I decided to start practicing with more intention to see if I could use investing to replace my income. All I needed was $300 a day to replace my income.

I took some classes to better educate myself and began seeing my trades become more and more consistent. I worked my way up from a losing portfolio to consistently gaining $300 or more a day. I was able to quit my job and start traveling around the world trading stocks.

I traveled and lived in over 7 countries just through trading, and eventually people started asking me to teach them how to trade. That’s when my Trade and Travel online course was born. 

Did you know much about trading before you started? How did you get started?

I first learned about investing in high school. I did a summer program my junior year at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. They took us to visit the Chicago Stock Exchange and that was my first exposure to the markets. I was so impressed.

And then in my senior year of high school, Google made their initial public offering and I really wanted to buy stocks. Yet no one in my community knew anything about investing to advise me or join me in that venture. I didn’t start trading myself until I was in college.

I ended up going to MIT for college and interned on Wall Street with Morgan Stanley. While I didn’t want to work in finance after graduating, I learned enough to start investing as a side hustle.

What do you like about trading and active investing?

I love that trading stocks is a skillset that you can use for the rest of your life. I also love that trading is flexible. I can do it whenever I want and from wherever I want.

I was able to make over $20,000 on the beach in Greece, and over $60,000 on a tour bus in South Africa. The income has been great for me, but the flexibility—to me, that is priceless.

Can you tell us what goes into trading in the stock market? How does it work?

Trading is actually pretty simple, and I truly believe that anyone can do it.

First, you have to open a brokerage account that allows you to trade stocks. One of my favorites is called TradeStation, but you can use any online broker. Then, through your brokerage account you begin buying and selling stocks (shares of a company) as often as you want.

I think of it the same way that I did when I owned a candy stand in high school. I would go to Costco and get blow pops for $.10 a piece and then sell them at school for $.25.

Now I buy shares at $100 and sell them at $250. It’s the same concept. Trading is just a negotiation between buyers and sellers. It’s important to figure out your strategy and stick with it to see good returns.

Do you need a lot of money to get started with active investing strategies?

You don’t need a lot of money to get started. In most professional brokerage accounts, they have a minimum amount required to fund the account to get started.

TradeStation has allowed my Trade and Travel students to open an account with $500 and then access a simulator where they can practice with fake money while they are learning. That money just sits in their account like a bank account until they are ready to use it.

Once the students are ready to start trading with real money though, I suggest getting started with at least $2,000.

I teach my students to try to make 1% of their cash amount per day. So the goal with $2,000 would be $20 a day or $100 a week. 

What’s the difference between what you do and long-term investing for retirement?

What I do is called active investing.

Active investing allows you to make income from stocks in real time. You can use the money right away for paying off debt, traveling, and other goals.

With a retirement account, you are looking at it more like a savings account. You can’t really use the money you are earning until you are ready to retire.

You’re investing for the future with retirement accounts, while active trading is investing in the here and now, for the present.

The key is that as an active investor I am reading stock charts to learn when to buy and sell a stock. I can see from stock formations when the big banks are buying and selling, which allows me to buy stocks when prices are low and sell stock when the stock prices are too high.

When I sell the stocks, I realize that profit into my account and can then transfer it into my checking account for other uses. 

Through active trading, I’ve been able to pay off my student loans, take my family on vacation, and replace (and exceed) my former income. There’s nothing wrong with a retirement account, and I think it’s wise to still have one. But I enjoy active trading because it gives me the flexibility to decide to use my money now.

How many hours does active investing take?

When a person is first learning, it will take more time because they aren’t as familiar with the stocks, plus they are still learning the market.

I suggest that they spend a max of four hours a day—two hours at the beginning of the market day, one hour when the market closes, and another hour at the end of the day to review your stocks and check for the next day. 

Once you get more experience, you can easily spent just 30 to 45 minutes trading each day.

How long does it take someone to start making money with active investing? 

This varies, of course, but with my students the goal is to start taking trades within the first two weeks of taking the class. Then we improve upon their skills as they continue in the course.

It takes about 60 – 120 days to fully learn my trading system.

Each student is a little different. I have some that jump in, devour the information and start making gains right away.

I have one VIP student that made over $5,000 and recovered the cost that she paid for the course plus more,  in less than 60 days. I have one that was able to quit his job after 6 months to trade full-time. Then I have others that take a year or more to get it down pack. I suggest that my students practice trading for about a year and see consistent returns before deciding to trade full time.

What financial goals are you currently working towards?

My most recent goal was to make six figures in a day trading. I recently met that goal, so now I am focused on helping my students meet their financial goals.

My new goal is to help 1,000 students to make $1,000 in a day. That’s a million dollars a day that I know can be used to help change lives around the world. 

If you were starting back at ground zero, what would you do differently from the beginning?

I wish that I had started investing earlier. Google had their initial public offering into the stock market my senior year of high school. I still remember that the stock started at $83 but I couldn’t afford it.

Now Google is over $1,100!

If I had gotten started earlier, that could have changed the trajectory of my life. I also wish that I had been able to invest during the Great Recession of 2008. I wish that I had taken advantage of the opportunities to get into stocks at the lows.

But I’ve learned that many times missed opportunities can come back around—like we are experiencing lately. 

Can you talk about how this isn’t a get rich quick scheme? I’m sure many people may be thinking that this is too good to be true.

Learning how to trade isn’t hard,  yet it takes time and patience. It’s a skill set like learning a new language.

Trading is not something where you can just put in a little money today and then become a millionaire tomorrow.

The best traders make small consistent gains every day. Those small consistent gains are what add up to reach bigger goals. But it takes lots of practice with reading charts, risk management, and discipline to get into the right trades at the right time.

Can you tell me more about your course?  Can you share some success stories from students who have taken your course?

My full VIP Trade and Travel course has seven classes in it.

It starts with intro to the stock market for my novice investors, and then we move into risk management, technical analysis (reading charts), and my seven-step trading plan.

It’s important that novice investors learn to pick good companies, learn a risk management plan to protect themselves, and learn to read charts to get into trades at the right price. Once they master that, we also go into some more advanced strategies like shorting, which is making money when the stock market is going down, and options.

As far as success stories, I’ve had so many. I now have over 1,200 students in the Trade and Travel course and students are making it into the $1,000 In A Day Club every day.

One of my favorite students, Annette, was able to retire from her job as a Registered Nurse and take care of her two nephews after her sister passed away because of learning how to trade stocks in my course. She needed more income and free time to care for the kids, even to take her kids to school in the morning. Now she has been able to make over $2,600 in 20 minutes actively investing and is well over her monthly RN salary trading stocks. I love that I have allowed her to gain back quality time with her family. I remember literally screaming along with her on our coaching call when she told me the news.

You can check out the Trade and Travel course and the full VIP Trade and Travel course through these referral links.

Are you interested in learning active investing strategies?