How I Got Into Trading—and Why AI is Indispensable Now

I have been investing and trading ever since I was in university many years ago. I have always blended the two—investing and trading. What is the difference? That is for another blog.

In the beginning, at least where I live in Singapore, buying and selling stocks was an expensive affair because of the high fees involved to complete each transaction. There were few brokers on the market, and most were somewhat linked to a bank—DBS Vickers, UOB Kay Hian, and Phillip Capital, just to name a few. The costs often included exorbitant fixed fees and variable fees. Coupled with the fact that I was a poor student and new to the job market, it was little wonder that I was not very active in the stock market.

Gradually over the years, more products launched with lower fees—particularly those cash accounts where you lock in your money with the broker to enjoy lower fees. I remember I could trade with a US-based broker to enjoy really low fees, particularly on US stock transactions. I used TD Ameritrade for a few years until they stopped serving non-accredited investors around 2023. If I remember correctly, TD Ameritrade was charging USD 1.99 for each transaction.

Around the same time, neobrokers began setting up shop in Singapore. The earliest to do so were Tiger Brokers and Moomoo. So, I signed up with both—Tiger to trade Hong Kong markets and Moomoo to trade US markets. I am especially active in trading the US market because the timing works for me.

At the time of writing, Moomoo's fee to trade the US market is a $0.99 platform fee per order, plus some other fees which I haven't been able to figure out—but the total fees always come to around $1.10 to $1.60, which is still very low. Moomoo is also offering free US Level 2 data. It is certainly attractive pricing that makes me trade more and more.

And trade more I did! In 2023, I completed 15 trades on the US market. In 2024, a total of 26 trades were done and dusted. Then it went up almost 5x to 131 in 2025. In the first 8 months of 2026, 145 trades were already completed, or almost 1 trade daily. Given that I only have around 1 to 1.5 hours daily to do everything—read the news, analyze the market, plan and shortlist stocks to buy, identify a strategy for the day, decide on entry and exit prices and the quantity to buy, put in the order, log down all the trades for the day, and then get ready for bed to ensure enough sleep for the next day's work—that's a lot of things to pack into the short trading window I have each day. So, any help would certainly be welcome. And this is where AI comes into play. What do I use it for? See my next blog! :)