Masi Habibi, founder of MasiTrades, never planned on becoming a go-to guru on options day trading. In fact, until 2018, she had never traded an option in her life. However, dissatisfied with her corporate job, she began looking for other ways to make a living and, without any real mentoring or assistance, began to learn the ins and outs of day trading. She was one of very few women in an area dominated by men, but that fact made her want to work even harder to break the glass ceiling, despite the initial bumps along the way. “I traded for a year before I became profitable, but for some reason, I never gave up.” Masi says that “failures are inevitable” in trading, but that “learning from them and utilising them as stepping stones is when everything will change.”
MasiTrades, and Habibi’s YouTube, Instagram, and Discord accounts are her way of giving other women the type of help she couldn’t find when she started out. At first she “felt awkward joining any Discord communities or trading groups” because she was a woman who had learned the ropes and was making more money than her male peers. But, she says, “once I got on YouTube and women started to learn from me how to break into such a male-dominated field, it motivated me even more.” Habibi realised that her own early struggles as a day trader, as well as her later success, could serve as models both of what to do and what not to do.
The key, she thinks, is learning how to be disciplined with emotions, so that a trader can hone in on a rational strategy. In the volatility of the market, especially over the past six months, that type of discipline isn’t easy. But, as Habibi points out, “this career is recession proof. It doesn’t matter which direction the market goes, so long as you’re ready to capitalize when it does make a move.”
Habibi hopes that the courses MasiTrades has developed will continue to help her clients be able to trade from anywhere, becoming a full-blown options trading resource for all people. At the same time, her success is a reminder to the world that women can be just as successful and financially literate as men. “My passion has really been teaching and guiding clients along their journeys to financial self-sufficiency while inspiring young women to realise that there is more to life.”
