Guide
How can I trade with a full-time job?
Watching the market and trading are not the same job. A full-time job takes the first one away, and the second can still be done. The setup that works is rules that act at times you are free, or rules that act without you: alerts that place the orders while you are at work, and a review each week. This guide covers strategies that fit a job, the weekly routine, and how to let alerts place the orders.
Watching is not trading
Most of the time a screen takes is spent watching: waiting for a price, checking whether a condition has arrived. The decision itself takes seconds. If the condition is written down as a rule, a chart can watch for it and an alert can carry the decision to a broker, which frees the hours without removing the trading.
The habit to drop is checking a phone between meetings and acting on impulse. It is the slowest way to trade, and a work day makes it worse.
Strategies that fit a job
- Daily or hourly bars
- A rule that evaluates once a bar fires a handful of alerts a week, few enough to review in an evening.
- Swing positions
- Holding for days instead of minutes means no decision is needed at the open. A written exit does the closing.
- A short symbol list
- A few tickers you know are easier to review than a scan across hundreds.
- Exit written before entry
- The trades that hurt part-time traders are the ones left open because nobody was looking. Write the exit rule first.
A weekly routine
- 1
Weekend: review and adjust
Open the broker's order history and the strategy's Logs tab. Compare each fill with what the rules said should have happened. Change a rule only here, never in the middle of a week.
- 2
Weekdays: leave it alone
Orders come from alerts. A few minutes in the evening to read what fired is enough.
- 3
Keep the allocation fixed
Set the amount per entry once and do not raise it mid-week. A fixed number keeps a bad week small enough to learn from.
Let alerts place the orders
Write the entry and exit rules as alerts on a TradingView chart, or post them in a Discord server or Telegram chat you run. Webhook alerts from TradingView need a paid plan and two-factor authentication. Nyria reads the alert, in any wording or JSON, and places the order at Charles Schwab, Tradier, tastytrade or Alpaca.
Entry, in the alert message
long entry AAPL
Exit
exit AAPL long
An alert cannot set the size. The bot sets it from the budget per entry you choose, so the amount at risk each time is a number you picked in advance. Nyria attaches no stop order to an entry, so your exit alert is what closes the position. Check how a message will be read in the alert tester.
Nyria does not read other people's channels. The alerts come from your own chart or from a server or chat you run.
Paper first
Nyria Paper is free and runs up to 10 paper bots. Let a week or two of real alerts fire on it while you are at work, then read the Logs tab in the evening. When the entries and exits read right, deploy a bot on the live account with a small budget per entry.
Questions
- Can I trade options with a full-time job?
- Yes, on timeframes that do not need you at the screen. Longer-dated positions move slowly, and an alert that names the underlying, strike and expiry can place the order while you are working.
- Will an alert fire while I am in a meeting?
- A chart alert fires when its condition is met, and a webhook carries it to the receiver. Nyria then places the order without you being present.
- What does it cost?
- Paper is free. Live trading from $15 a month.
Guides
Automate trading alerts into broker orders
What an alert is, three ways to automate it, and what to check before you trust it.
Swing-trade stock alerts with position sizing
A dollar budget per entry or a share count, whole shares, held until the exit alert.
Automated trading on a small budget
What $15 a month buys, why budget per entry is the number that matters, a worked example on paper then live.
Let a paper bot take the first week of alerts
Paper is free. Live trading from $15 a month.