Accredited investors must have either an income of $200K+ in each of the last 2 years or at least $1M in investable assets. Really, you should have both. And double both of those, so $400K+ in income & $2M+ in investments, before messing with private investments.

I have met precious few older, wealthy investors who got that way by trading stocks. In fact, I don't know of any. Most of the wealthy people I know worked hard, perhaps built a business they controlled, saved a bunch of money, invested it in some reasonable way, and waited.