Frankly, I’m tired of hearing how dangerous and unprofitable day trading is. After doing a little research, I’ve found several ways to make good money at it.

19.8 million

Data: Motley Fool CAPS as of Nov. 18, 2014.

The most volatile stocks in the market are often penny stocks, which trade for $5 or less per share, like those above. With its beta of 3.2, RadioShack could rise (or fall) 3.2 times as fast as the market if the market’s value begins to rise (or fall). Day traders like that potential for speedy gains, as they hope to ride each volatile stock for only a short while. (Of course, many get burned when things don’t go their way.)

Also note the high trading volume of these stock market minnows, which can both attract and reflect day trading activity. Given their small size, the penny stocks see huge trading activity as a percentage of their market capitalization.

Day trading is an intense occupation. Photo: Flickr user David Blackwell .

Where the money is

If you think these penny stocks present the best opportunity for potential day-trading profits, you’re wrong. There’s actually an 80% chance you’ll fail at day trading. So how can you make money from day trading?

For starters, you could start a company that runs day trading seminars, charging people $3,000 or $5,000 to learn about something they’re likely to fail at. You certainly wouldn’t be the first! Alternatively, you could sell trading software or research services to further capitalize on the many failing day-traders. You only need to enroll 200 students in a $5,000 course in order to rake in a million dollars!

If you’d like an even juicier return, you could run a brokerage that gets paid commissions for every purchase or sale a day trader makes. Even at a cost of just $1 per trade, a single day trader placing 30 trades per day for 200 days per year will bring you $6,000 per year. (A thousand day traders? That’s $6 million!) To further increase your profits, let day traders borrow from you on margin. You could make more than $2,000 annually in interest payments on every $25,000 they borrow. Clearly, day trading can be extremely lucrative!

And if all of that sounds like too much work, you could always just become an agency authorized by the U.S. government to tax day traders — like the IRS. The IRS taxes day-trading profits at ordinary income tax rates, because they’re considered short-term capital gains. For example, day traders in a 28% tax bracket will pay $14,000 on $50,000 in gains — as opposed to just $7,500 if they held on to their investments long enough for long-term capital gain rates to apply.

As I hope it’s becoming clear to you, the only people reliably profiting off of day trading are those who don’t actually day trade. You’re much more likely to profit by taking your time, doing your homework. and investing in well-run companies with real competitive advantages — for the long run. You might not get rich quick, but you’ll stand a much better chance of getting rich. period.

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