Trading With An IRA | Podcast Episode #430

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Hey, I’m Ryan Mallory and this is my Swing Trading the Stock Market podcast. I’m here to teach you how to trade in a complex, ever changing world of finance.

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Learn what it means to trade profitably and consistently, managing risk, avoiding the pitfalls of trading, and most importantly, to let those winners run wild.

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You can succeed at the stock market and I’m ready to show you how. Hey everybody, this is Ryan Mallory with shareplanner.com’s Swing Trading the Stock Market.

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In today’s podcast episode, I have an e-mail from a guy here that I’m going to call Elmer. And I give people a fake name just because I don’t want to use their real name.

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And it allows them to be a little bit more honest in their emails to me knowing that I’m not going to use their real name.

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So like I said, we’re going to use Elmer for the name. Give him a good Florida redneck name, being that I’m from Florida and part redneck.

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So Elmer writes all right I have several questions so hopefully that is OK and if so, you’ll need to assign me a good Florida red nickname.

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I started listening to your podcast back in May and I found it very insightful. The time frame of each episode is perfect because they often time out perfectly with my commute.

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I mainly invest through my employers 4O1K plan and invest in mutual funds as my main investments. However, I opened up a Roth IRA account during the COVID shutdowns and started doing some trading on

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my own, but only on the side. I’ve bounced back and forth between swing trading and a very small account and then tried dividend

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income investing but found a lot of the high yield dividend stocks, those offering plus 10% returns, to be very volatile and more risky.

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Now I’m thinking that setting some money aside to use for swing trading. My first question is regarding my Roth IRA.

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What are the pros and cons to swing trading with a Roth IRA? My second question is that due to my smaller account size, do I need $25,000 in order to avoid

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pattern day trading or do I only need enough cash on hand to cover unsettled cash trades? I’m hoping I’m asking that correctly.

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When I first started trading I ended up completing 3 or 4 trades with a within a one or two day span and got a warning e-mail from my broker.

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Is there anything I can do to avoid the pattern day trading rule if I don’t want to trade on a margin account and have a smaller account?

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Question #3 is regarding setting up a stop loss. If a stop loss is triggered, does that count towards my trade count?

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I’m pretty sure that it does, but if that is the case, then it seems like I would quickly find myself in the pattern day training camp, which is why I asked question #2 I definitely needed to do more research, but was hoping that you could clear up the pattern day trading rule and stop losses and how they’re affected by it.

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Vice versa. If you’re still with me, I have some more questions maybe for another time.

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I appreciate your help and insights. Thank you, Elmer.

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All right, this is a good question, Elmer. Actually multiple questions that you gave me there, Elmer.

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And let’s go ahead and start tackle them right away. So pros and cons of trading with a Roth IRA, for those who don’t know it, it’s investment retirement account Roth IRA, you basically paid the taxes on the money that you’re contributing upfront.

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Traditional Iras, you pay the taxes afterwards. Now, I like Roth IRA better than traditional Iras, but there’s some limitations to them from an income standpoint, which we’ll get to in a bit.

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But if you qualify to use a Roth IRA, I would rather use a Roth IRA all day long. And the reason why is because traditional Iras, if you put your money in the Traditional IRA, you really don’t know what the tax brackets are going to be at that time.

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They could have a different president, a different Congress that comes along and says, you know what, we’re going to tax Iras at 60% down the road, right? I mean, what’s what’s the stop?

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And they can do it. It’s legal. They can even tax them at 90% for all we know. So I don’t like the idea of leaving that open-ended.

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And it’s the same thing with four O 1 case. There’s trillions and trillions of dollars and four O 1 KS in retirement accounts.

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So if it ever gets really bad, the debt, well, I shouldn’t say that if it gets really, it’s really, really bad already.

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I mean, we’re we’re talking about parabolic interest payments that the government’s now making. And because the government continues to spend out of deficit, because we’re now like at over a trillion dollars in in interest that we’re paying each year against the debt that is only going to continue to get worse, especially as we can’t even balance a budget.

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So probably the only way they can manage this is to devalue the dollar, which is a, which is a sad thing.

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And I’m not trying to get, I swear, I’m not trying to get into politics. Like every time I talk about anything government related, it’s like Ryan, you’re, you’re a conservative.

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Ryan, you’re a liberal. Ryan, I can’t stand you. Whatever.

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This is important because we’re talking about Iras here. And if I’m being completely honest with you, I would, I don’t know who the president’s going to be

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30-40 years from now, but I would be very nervous about with the debt and the amount that we already have.

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We’re like at what, 3435 trillion dollars and we got over a trillion dollars in interest payments. What is that going to look like in 30 to 40 years?

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And if we’re not being able to pay, if we don’t have people that are willing to take on the debt via bonds and buy those bonds, then you got to find it from somewhere else.

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And as a result, you tax the Iras, you tax the four O 1 KS. And so that’s why I like the Roth IR as better.

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Of course, if you have a four O 1K and you have an employer that’s saying, hey, if you put 6% in, we’re going to match you 6%, yeah, that’s free money.

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I would do that all day long. But my concern becomes when you go above and beyond that, are you exposing yourself to a risk far down the road that when you actually reach the age where you can start withdrawing money out of your account?

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And then when you get to a certain age, there are mandatory withdrawals. So when you get to that point, are we going to be in a taxation system?

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Is there going to be an administration or a Congress in place that has passed and is OK with taxing these retirement accounts at 60-70, eighty, 90%?

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Because if you were looking to pay off the debt, that would be the place to go. So if you qualify to be able to do a Roth IRA, and we’ll get into some of that in just a second, I

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would, this is me talking personally. Me personally, I would rather do the Roth IRA.

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Now there’s limitations. So that’s one of the things that I would be consider it about, you know, is the fact that, you know, the Traditional IRA or a four O 1K, you could be taxed up the Ying Yang for whatever a president in Congress agrees to at some point down the road.

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There’s also here’s a con to the Roth IR as here, because he’s asked me specifically about Roth IR as there is a con in the sense that you can’t just go put, OK, you know what, I want to put $50,000 in a Roth IRA account.

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You can’t do that. 2023, it was $6500 that you can put in a year.

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Now if you have a wife, you can go and do like accounts for each person and put that money in each so you can double up on it.

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But 2023 is $6500. That means for a married couple you can put $13,000 in a per year.

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And if you’re over 50 years old, you can put like an extra $1000. I believe for 2024, you can put up to $7000 per person.

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Or if you’re a married couple, you can put $7000 in each and essentially have a $14,000. Now the income limit though, and this is, this is where it starts to get tricky.

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That’s why I, I talked about in the beginning of this episode, if you qualify. So if you qualify, the income limit for making a full contribution to your Roth IRA is $146,000 or

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less for a, for a single tax filer. And then it comes out to like $230,000 or less for a married couples if you’re filing jointly.

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And then when you go above that amount, your contributions get reduced. Or if you’d make too much it, then you can’t do anything at all.

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So this is based off of your modified adjusted gross income. And if you’re, you’re filing jointly with a, with a spouse, then if you’re over 240,000, we talked

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about 230,000, you start to see that amount get reduced. But it’s, if it’s over 240,000, you can’t contribute anything to a Roth IRA.

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So you’re kind of stuck with a Traditional IRA. I mean, that’s kind of sucks, but that’s the way the government works.

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However, the withdrawal and I’m not going to get too much into the withdrawals, but you can make withdrawals against your Roth IRA under certain circumstances and if you meet certain time

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requirements, which easily Googleable, Googleable. There’s a five year rule that applies to your Roth IRA for withdrawals regardless of your age when

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you open the account. The five year rule begins on January 1st of the year that you made your first contribution and

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usually have until April 15th of the following year to contribute. Right.

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But withdrawals that meet this criteria are considered qualified distributions and your earnings won’t count as income.

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However, there are some exceptions that allow for early withdrawals such as a death in the family, education expenses.

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It has to be qualified, of course, birth or adoption expenses, first time home buying expenses and and there’s caps to it of course too, but there’s rules behind the withdrawals.

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Now traditional Iras, they’re very much different. So are four O 1 KS.

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And again, I’m not going to get into this with the with the podcast easily searchable on the Internet.

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Now, one thing to remember, so a lot of questions that I get from traders is like, Hey, I want to be a full time trader, right?

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So if you’re being a full time trader, you have to live off the income that’s generated from your trading.

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If you’re trading throughout Roth IRA or a four O 1K or a Traditional IRA, that’s going to be darn near impossible at that point, you know, maybe a little bit more possible through a Roth IRA, but

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really it’s very restrictive if you’re going at it with that approach. So if that’s the case, you’re going to need income coming in from somewhere else, whether that’s a

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job or a side hustle or something else, or maybe your spouse is a sugar Mama or sugar daddy, I guess in that case.

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And then that’s that’s good too. Hey, you guys got a second source of income?

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So the second question that he asked is do I need $25,000 in order to avoid the pattern day trading

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rule or do I only need enough in cash in hand to cover the unsettled cash trade? So yeah, you need $25,000. I hate the pattern day trading rule.

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I think it’s one of the stupidest things that’s ever come about. It’s your money, you can do what you want.

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Same people who are putting these pattern day trading rules in place are totally fine with the expansion of gambling and casinos, which have a far greater loss rate than the stock market.

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Yes, you can blow up a stock account very quickly, but you can even do it far more so in a casino. And who’s I don’t see any pattern gambling rules for the casinos, right?

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And not that there should be, but it’s very hypocritical for there to be laws in place saying that you can’t be a pattern day trader, but you can go down to Royal Caribbean, board a ship for a couple

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100 bucks and you can blow your entire life savings and nobody will say a word about. In fact, it’s encouraged to gamble as much as you can, right?

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I mean, I get it. There’s disclaimers like only gamble as much as that you’re able to, and they’ll give you a hotline if you have a gambling issue.

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But in essence, they’re hoping for you to lose. They want you to lose. They want to collect your money.

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They want to be able to make a big profit so they can report it to. And I’m not just talking about Royal Caribbean, I’m just talking about the gambling industry in

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general. You know, whether you’re going to Las Vegas or getting on a ship or going to a reservation that has gambling, they want your money.

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They want you to lose, and it’s set up for you to lose. You’re set up not to be a winner.

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Yes, there’s the occasional winners, but overall, you’re set up to lose unless you’re me trying to teach your son not to be a gambler.

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And so you give him $20 on a cruise to go gamble and to show him how fast you can lose that money, and he turns it into $120.00, right?

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Yeah. That was a great, great job I made, you know, showing him the benefits of not gambling. He ended up getting richer as a result.

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OK, that’s, that’s a story for a different time. But to answer Elmer’s question here, you can’t avoid the pattern day trading rule.

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You just can’t. The only way you can avoid is by putting $25,000 into your account.

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Yes, there’s other vehicles of trading that you can do outside of equities that can help you avoid that.

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But we’re talking about equities here and you can’t avoid it. And he, he asks a question later on in this e-mail where it talks about, hey, if I get stopped out,

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does that count against me from pattern day trade? Yes, it does count against you.

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And so if you’re trading very volatile stocks and you’re using a tight stop loss, probably going to activate that pattern day trading rule very quickly.

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So you don’t want to do that either. But one thing you do want to do is sign up for swingtradingthestockmarket.com.

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OK, this is going to take you to my SharePlanner website. And you’re going to have an opportunity to either trade along with me or get all my stock market

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research. And it’s a really great opportunity to to know what I’m thinking, to know what I’m trading in real time.

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And with it, you’re going to get all of my stock market research.

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That’s going to be daily watchlist, that’s going to be reviews on the daily watchlist. Yes, I go over the watchlist later on in the day just to talk about what’s going on with each of

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these trade setups on the watchlist. I want to go over those and, and dissect them.

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Plus, I’m going to be sending out big tech updates. I’m going to be sending out stock market updates throughout the week.

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It’s a really good opportunity. You’re going to get my master bullish and bearish watchlist that I send out at the beginning of each

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week. Really cool stuff there.

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So check it out. You can go to shareplanner.com or swingtradingthestockmarket.com and get all the information

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there.

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So one of the things that a lot of people would do and the reason why I’m going to bring it up here is because some people not believe what I’m talking about and think, oh, I’m sure there’s a way

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around this pattern day trading rule and they will get themselves into some very bad places.

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You have to just get $25,000 eventually, whether that’s through saving or through trading. But what a lot of people will do is they’ll go after these prop firms.

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And I’m telling you, the prop firms are the devil in disguise. Guys.

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Do not use a prop firm. Proprietary transfer, whoever you want to call, don’t use a prop firm.

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These are the people who say give us $2500, pull the cash off of your credit card and we’ll give you 10 to one margin and then you can avoid the pattern day trading rules.

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Or you give them $5000 and they will give you $45,000 in return so that you can trade with a $50,000 account.

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And it sounds great, especially if you’re on a hot streak or you think that you have misplaced optimism in your trading abilities.

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This is the worst thing you can do as a trader. I would say you have 100% chance of blowing out your account, but I have to say 99.9999999999%

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because there’s that one dude that would probably get lucky or whatever. But to keep in mind, these prop firms, a lot of them, you’re not even actually trading when you

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think that you’re trading. So if you make money, they never actually made your trades.

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You are trading on a paper machine, paper account. You were not trading legitimately.

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So let’s say you buy a stock at $100 and it goes up to $10,000 over the course of the next few months.

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You’re saying, OK, I’m going to cash out, I’m moving on, I’m trading on my own. Guess what?

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They never made that trade for you. They just pretended that they made that trade for you.

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So you’re screwed. I’m telling you, these things are predatory lending firms here.

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That’s what they should be called, not prop firms. Predatory lending.

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It is that how there’s how they still exist. And a lot of them get rated by the federal government, which I applaud them for.

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But most of them, they’re overseas. They’re taking your money.

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They might be in the Grand Cayman Islands or they might be in Mexico, or they might be in India, and you will never get your money back.

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So don’t do it. I just feel like I have to say that every once in a while, every hundred episodes or so, I got to

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just go on a rant about prop firms because I feel like so many people are going for them and I think they are just the worst possible decision that you can ever make with your money.

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You have a better chance of getting your money back with somebody who’s pretending to be your son or daughter in a car accident, saying that they’re going to be arrested if you don’t give them $20,000.

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You know those people that they target the older folks, you’re better off giving your money to them than to a prop firm. That’s how that’s how low I have a of a view that I have of prop firms.

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But when it comes to trading, yes, I’ve always believed that you can start trading with any amount. Since we’ve gone to commissionless trading, it’s it’s very possible.

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Now you can start with $1000, but I always say that don’t have the expectations that you’re going to turn that $1000 into $10,000.

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It’s just it’s absolutely crazy to think that you’re going to get 1000% return. Can it happen?

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Yes, OK. I mean, you look at NVIDIA, somebody held NVIDIA from 2019 and to today, they’d be up crazy amounts of dollars.

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But going into it thinking that you can consistently do it, that’s a completely different story.

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So I do say that $25,000 is preferable because inevitably you’re going to get tagged with that pattern day trading if you’re a swing trader.

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And it’s not going to be for the reasons that you think. I can tell you why I’m a pattern day trader in my account.

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It’s because I make mistakes along the way. You know how many times that I have added to a stock instead of sold a stock?

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I’m like, OK, stock hit my stop loss, I’m getting out and I put a stop loss in. At the beginning of each trading session, that stop loss gets triggered and then I find out that I

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actually doubled my position size. It’s true.

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Now there’s a lot of people admit to that. No, because you feel like you feel stupid for saying it, but I guarantee you everybody’s done that.

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But guess what happens when I do that? I have to go ahead and and reduce that position size completely.

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Get out of it. Because originally what I wanted to do was get out of the trade.

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So now I’m getting out of the trade completely. I might have held the original shares for, you know, a couple weeks and now I’m getting stopped out.

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But now because I just doubled my position size, instead of closing out the position, I’m now closing out a trade that I just opened in that stock and now I’m having to close it out.

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So that counts as a round trip, a one day round trip or I get into a swing trade.

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That is not the best swing trade. OK, the stock, it maybe it has a bull flag, it’s breaking out and all of a sudden it reverses midday and it maybe there’s a big market sell off and the big market sell off takes down everything.

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We’ve seen that happen a bit here in the last couple weeks. And as a result, the stock that I got into, I’ve already been stopped out the same day.

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So now I have two pattern day trades against me. Or let’s say that you get stupid and you’re like, you know what?

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I was short in the market and the market ran against me and I got stopped out. Tired of this crap. The market’s rigged, right?

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That’s what a lot of people will tell you. Market’s rigged.

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I’m going long on this market, I’m going to get my revenge on this market and make my losses back from that short.

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And then all of a sudden the market starts to creep down lower and you’re like, oh crap, I shouldn’t have done that.

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Now I’m going to get back to short again. Well, you just closed out another round trip.

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Now you got three pattern day trades and that can all happen in just a day or a week. And if it happens within a week, you know you’re going to get hit with that pattern day trading

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rule. So yes, if you can start with 25,000 is preferable.

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Is it required? No, but it definitely makes life a little bit easier.

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But I don’t I don’t want that to stop people from what, you know, wanting to get their feet wet with the stock market, whether it’s through swing trading or through long term investing or through day

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trading. Not a huge fan of people starting off in day trading just because I think that becomes too much more like a casino to where you’re just trying to, you know, play off of the flavor of the day and hoping

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that there’s enough other people to that can help keep pumping the stock higher after after you get in.

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So swing trading and long term investing, those are my preferred vehicles.

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But just recently they changed the rules on the settlement now, now firms have to settle within one day.

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So that makes it a little bit easier because when you have a cash account, you can only trade with settled money.

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That usually took like two to three days. Now it’s down to one day.

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So that definitely helps out quite a bit. But the pattern day trading rule you definitely got to look out for if you’re trading under $25,000.

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This is a good e-mail from Elmer and I hope that he continues to write the show and provide some other question.

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He had some other ones. But one thing I would encourage him to do, maybe Polish up those other questions that I left out and we can maybe do another episode off of that in the future.

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If you enjoyed this podcast, I would encourage you to leave me a 5 star review on whatever platform you’re listening to.

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That means the world to me because it does it kind of gives me validation for what I’m doing with this show.

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I’m really trying to help out people.

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I really want people to learn about the stock market. I’ve been doing it for a few decades now and there’s been a lot of lessons that I’ve, I’m still learning and I want to be able to convey those things to you.

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And if you have a question that you want to ask me, feel free to do so by sending in a question of your own to ryan@shareplanner.com.

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I’m the only one that reads these emails.

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Nobody else is reading it. I’m not distributing it to anybody else.

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So send it to me ryan@shareplanner.com. I’ll read it.

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Make a podcast episode out of it, and make sure to check out swingtradingthestockmarket.com.

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Or you can also go to shareplanner.com which is my blog that I run for. This podcast.

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So before I wrap it up, I want to tell you what I had today as an old fashioned.

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Now for those who don’t know what I’m doing here, I used to do bourbon reviews during my podcast as part of the the talk about the stock market.

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Now I’m doing because I got way too many bottles of bourbon that’s not getting consumed. I’m now doing reviews based off of finding the best bourbon or an old fashioned because that’s my

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favorite drink. Old fashioned.

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I always order it. The bourbon for today is Kentucky Owl.

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You’ve probably seen this at a lot of stores. It’s considered a little bit on the higher end.

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I’ve never been a fan of it from just drinking it neat. I’ve never tried it on ice.

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Maybe it’s better if you use use it on the rocks. But Kentucky Owl bourbon whiskey, it’s a 48.2%, which makes it 96.4% proof.

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Now when I pour it and usually when it has a proof under 50%, I like to have my bourbon at least at 100 proof.

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That’s your bottled and bond stuff. This one comes in a little bit light, but it’s it’s a very pleasant taste.

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I’d probably give it a 7.4 just a little bit below the Evan Williams. Now if you don’t like the sharp bite in a old fashioned, this one would be the way to go.

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It’s going to be a little bit pricier. I think Kentucky Owl in general is an overpriced bourbon, but it does have a much sweeter honey like taste in the old fashioned.

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It’s not bad at all. I give it a 7.4.

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I don’t think it’s as good as using the Evan Williams, which has a little bit more bite, a little bit higher proof, but Kentucky Owl, not bad at all.

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So 7.4, I think it’s better than most of the things that you’ll get at a store. They’ll probably put Jack Daniels in your old fashions, but Kentucky Owl is pretty good.

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If you enjoyed this podcast episode, I would encourage you to leave me a 5 star review on whatever platform that you’re listening to me on, whether it’s iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple, whatever it is, just leave me a leave me a five star review.

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I do greatly appreciate those and helps me to know that you know what I’m doing here is impacting you guys.

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I’m really trying to share the lessons that I’ve learned in trading over a few decades now that most people won’t tell you about it.

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And I try to be completely honest with everything that I’ve gone through the experiences.

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And so I want to be able to convey those things to you because the last thing I want you guys to have to do is go through the some of the same hardships that I had to do and learning how to become a, a trader for myself.

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So send me your emails. I want to be able to help you guys out it.

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It really does mean the world to me when you guys send me your questions. I honestly get a huge thrill out of being able to do these podcast episodes for you guys.

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So do that and check out swingtradingthestockmarket.com.

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Thanks for listening to my podcast, Swing Trading the Stock Market. I’d like to encourage you to join me in the SharePlanner or Trading Block where I navigate the stock market each day with traders from around the world.

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If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me at ryan@shareplanner.com. All the best to you and I look forward to trading with you soon.