Many people begin online stock trading with the false belief that they will get rich fast. They believe that they will find some little-known secret and exploit it to generate piles of money while everyone else laments their losses. And this is actually the primary reason why 70% of day traders lose money-they simply do not have realistic expectations.

If you want to master online stock trading, you must set realistic goals that you can actually achieve. If you set your standards far beyond what you can hope to earn, you will get frustrated easily and give up, when you should actually be looking for a better way to nuance your strategy.

Excessive penny stock trading is one example of the pervasiveness of this unrealistic mindset. Many first-time traders will immediately jump into highly-speculative and highly-volatile markets with the false beliefs that they can earn a massive profit fast. This may happen, but they may also lose a lot of money instead.

If you have a lot of money to risk and you are a risk-neutral trader, then you may want to start trading penny stocks; however, you should always proceed with caution by getting the best information you can before you ever enter a market.

Again, even if you are risk-neutral, you should still spend time working with an online stock trading simulator before you actually start to buy and sell stock. You may think you have found a profitable trend, but if you haven't had the chance to prove it through testing (which you can do completely for free), then you really have no reasonable way of assuming that your strategy will work in reality.

This is why you must ground your thoughts. You must understand that most professional brokerages with workers who have traded for years can't bring in much more than 7% each year without making significant risks, which means you will have a hard time doing better, even if you find a profitable strategy.

If you plan to go into stock trading, you should either expect to make around 7% by creating a diversified portfolio of companies that have a long history of steady growth; or you should trade highly-volatile stocks with the assumption that you will lose every penny you trade until you master online stock trading.