Making a living by investing in the stock market is not possible: make numbers

Making a living by investing in the stock market is not possible: make numbers

Managers with decades of experience explain the difficulties in achieving positive returns

To get a 'salary' of 2,000 euros would have to have more than 250,000 euros of wealth and good luck

Josef Ajram is the most famous trader in Spain. Ultra-marathoner, model, writer, lecturer ... A magnet for televisions. In 2011 he published the book Win Money in the Stock Market is Possible: the Ajram method . The title is irresistible, but the athlete failed in the empirical demonstration of his thesis. In 2016 it launched its own investment vehicle ( Ajram Capital sicav ), which in two years recorded losses of 11% despite the fact that the stock market has risen in this period.

The attractiveness of earning a living by investing in financial markets is undeniable . From the cinema and television, the idea that, being smart, it is possible to become a millionaire by "betting" on the stock market. There are dozens of courses, conferences and books that try to convince unsuspecting people that becoming a professional broker and achieving periodic rents is not that difficult. But have you ever done the accounts?

Fund managers know these numbers perfectly. Your job is to buy and sell stocks and bonds to get a return for the owners of the investment funds they manage.

"In this market, getting a profitability of more than 10% in the long term, discounting expenses, is really virtuous. Only reserved for the best. And always taking into account that we are talking about investment in the stock market, which has a high volatility and in which you can spend very bad periods, "explains Josep Prats, manager of the Abante European Quality fund, which manages a net worth of 180 million euros.