Meet the 20-year-old day-trading phenom who's turned $20,000 into more than $1 million. He details h
- Nour Atta, a 20-year-old day-trading prodigy, was interested in the stock market from a very early age.
- After a lucky trading streak, Atta decided to refine his strategy when he learned he could've lost $20,000 on a single position.
- He's now grown his account from $20,000 to more than $1 million, according to a video of the account viewed by Business Insider.
- Atta also claims he's made an additional $1.9 million that he has split between an LLC and real estate investing opportunities.
- In an exclusive interview, Atta broke down the disciplined trading approach he uses — one that relies heavily on technical indicators.
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Nour Atta, a 20-year-old day-trading maestro, became interested in the stock market at an age when most teenagers are worried about "Fortnite," making TikTok videos, and what they'll wear to school the next day.
"It kind of sounds crazy, but I've honestly been learning about the stock market since middle school," Atta said in an exclusive interview with Business Insider. "My dad was a long investor."
Atta would constantly pepper his father with questions about stocks, trying to gain an understanding of why the market moved the way that it did and how he chose the positions in his portfolio. This guidance from Atta's father laid the foundation for his understanding.
Shortly thereafter, Atta's innate curiosity turned into a burning desire to participate in the market.
"I was just seeing a lot of people make money on Wall Street, and I was like: 'Let me start,'" he said. "At the time, I had a lot of money saved up due to me buying and selling shoes."
He added: "I ended up throwing $20,000 into a Robinhood account."
At the beginning, Atta found success purely through luck. He wound up netting over $80,000 from a Micron earnings-announcement trade, fully unaware that the $20,000 he had piled into the position could've gone to zero overnight.
"It was very scary hearing that I could've lost 100%," he said. "That could've been my last trade ever honestly."
Fast-forward to today, and a much more educated, disciplined, and strategic Atta is making a killing in the market.
All in all, he has parlayed that initial $20,000 into a little over $1 million, according to a video of the account viewed by Business Insider. Atta also claims he's made an additional $1.9 million that he has split between an LLC and real estate investing opportunities.
His strategy
Atta makes his millions by trading breakouts, which involves using price ranges to determine when to buy and sell. He also leverages his positions through the usage of options contracts, which help control his risk and exacerbate his purchasing power.
To pick his entry and exit points, Atta meticulously annotates the charts of stocks that are on his radar. He generally trades only a handful of large-cap technology stocks — Tesla, Netflix, Apple, Amazon, and Roku, to name a few — that he knows inside and out.
"I'm not very patient when it comes to trading," he said. "I focus on resistance, support lines, ascending triangles, descending triangles, symmetrical triangles. I'm a day trader, but a lot of my trades are under five minutes."
Atta watches the price action of the stock at hand to see how it reacts to the support or resistance lines he's drawn. To determine the position size — which typically ranges from $70,000 to $80,000 — he gauges market sentiment by assessing the action of the S&P 500 as a whole. If it's a day when the benchmark is moving higher, he knows that the call options he's purchased (a bullish position) will likely have a tailwind.
The same goes for down days. If the S&P 500 is moving lower, Atta knows the put options he's bought (bearish positions) should receive a boost. If a stock breaks out or is rejected from his support or resistance lines on heavy volume, Atta is ready to take advantage of the move.
Below is an annotated Tesla chart Atta used to make a quick $9,000. Once Tesla traded above $606 (as detailed by the lowest bright-blue dashed line on the chart), and the move was confirmed by heavy volume (the blue vertical lines below), Atta purchased a group of call options. He sold them shortly afterward, locking in his profits from the spike higher.
$11,400 in 2 minutes
Before the market opened on April 20, Atta was already focused on Shopify's stock. The stock looked to be on the cusp of an all-time high.
"I caught Shopify from $594 to $616, and that only took two and a half minutes — and then I'm out," he said. "I know the market chases Shopify every time it makes a new high."
Below are Atta's time-stamped Shopify buys and sells, along with his hefty $11,400 profit in the bottom right-hand corner.
When the market opened, Shopify jumped past its all-time high (the bright-blue dashed line) on heavy volume, and Atta bought $44,000 worth of call options.
"When it breaks through that [high] with volume, it shows that buyers are being aggressive on the stock," he said.
Two minutes later, he exited the position, netting thousands in the process.
Though Atta has had an incredible career day-trading thus far, he's quick to note that this lifestyle isn't for everyone. He said that not everyone has the emotional discipline to withstand thousand-dollar-plus swings in their accounts.
"I don't think everybody can be a trader," he said. "I just don't think a lot of people could survive this."
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