anyone day trade?

[pedro01]

What makes the difference in a good day trader?

Luck?

Work ethic?

Intelligence?

Balls

[affeman]

Balls

Hope their "balls" help them in their personal bankruptcy as well

[pedro01]

Many of them are failed day traders.

What happened over the past 3 weeks is just a warm up.  Nothing goes straight down and there will be rallies along the way, but the coming market crash will astonish even the most ardent bears.

Not necessarily.

This is probably just an adjustment for the end of qe.

Probably level out soon

[Thin Lizzy]

Not necessarily.

This is probably just an adjustment for the end of qe.

Probably level out soon

It's a different of opinion that makes horse races and financial markets.

[XFACTOR]

What if we started a Getbig Collective Trading Company where everyone puts in a small amount of money and then we all vote on what to trade for the day.  We can organize it with Pedro at the top.  Then we share the profits equally but require a certain percentage to be reinvested in the pool.

Thanks Madoff

[FitnessFrenzy]

What if we started a Getbig Collective Trading Company where everyone puts in a small amount of money and then we all vote on what to trade for the day.  We can organize it with Pedro at the top.  Then we share the profits equally but require a certain percentage to be reinvested in the pool.

I propose the following board of directors:

CEO: XFACTOR

CFO: Skorpio

HR: Wiggs

Public Relations: Kwon_2

CSR: Musclecenter

Marketing: IronMeister

Sales: Uncle Joon

[anabolichalo]

I propose the following board of directors:

CEO: XFACTOR

CFO: Skorpio

HR: Wiggs

Public Relations: Kwon_2

CSR: Musclecenter

Marketing: IronMeister

Sales: Uncle Joon

lmao

[2Thick]

LOL you never find a rich technical trader or day trader.


Look at the richest men in the world. NONE of them day trade.

They are either:

A. Investment mangers of some sort

B. Business owners

C. Investors

D. maybe the rare media mogul/pro athlete/musician

Have fun loosing all your cash though!

Agreed.

Just about anyone can make a little short term dough in a bull market.

I’m always curious as to how long any currently “successful” day traders have been doing it, and exactly how they’ve performed and what they’ve done to do so. Most can’t or won’t elaborate even on just how long they’ve done it and how they’ve performed, much less how they’ve done it.

I don’t think I’ve ever met one who did it through a bear market and has continued to do so.

Anyone with a true edge that will somehow allow them to consistently make the kind of returns over the long haul that they won’t get investing with DE Shaw, Jim Simons, or Steve Cohen won’t be sharing or even selling it. They’ll keep it to themselves and continue to make those returns on their way to billionaire-dom while everyone else who is trading is either going broke or making much more modest returns at best.


I only care about protecting my money and getting richer over time. I don’t care how I do it or whether or not I impress anyone along the way.

[denarii]

I propose the following board of directors:

CEO: XFACTOR

CFO: Skorpio

HR: Wiggs

Public Relations: Kwon_2

CSR: Musclecenter

Marketing: IronMeister

Sales: Uncle Joon

Bass Generator: Post room

Booty: Front desk

Visualise Homosex: IR girl for all the public school wealth managers, nom saying.

[jr]

isnt every mining stock in the orphan period

Most end up stuck in the orphan period as their project economics suck and no one will give them money to progress.

[Thin Lizzy]

Agreed.

Just about anyone can make a little short term dough in a bull market.

I’m always curious as to how long any currently “successful” day traders have been doing it, and exactly how they’ve performed and what they’ve done to do so. Most can’t or won’t elaborate even on just how long they’ve done it and how they’ve performed, much less how they’ve done it.

I don’t think I’ve ever met one who did it through a bear market and has continued to do so.

Intra-day traders are just looking for price movement one way or the other. They'd just as soon go short as long. The long term trend of the market doesn't mean anything, as they are always flat at the end of the day.

The real question to ask is how they got their initial bankroll. All these internet trading wizards act as though the money fell out of the sky.

It's one thing to make a little money trading. It's a whole different animal to make enough to pull out your living expenses while still growing your bankroll.

The way most regular people become wealthy in the stock market is by feeding money into their brokerage account from other income sources and using that money to accumulate larger and larger positions. Doing this for 20-30 years, combined with a bit of luck, one can develop a nice net worth.

Of course, someone looking to get rich quick doesn't want to hear this story.

[visualizeperfection]

Bass Generator: Post room

Booty: Front desk

Visualise Homosex: IR girl for all the public school wealth managers, nom saying.

Denarru - fluffer

[pedro01]

Intra-day traders are just looking for price movement one way or the other. They'd just as soon go short as long. The long term trend of the market doesn't mean anything, as they are always flat at the end of the day.

The real question to ask is how they got their initial bankroll. All these internet trading wizards act as though the money fell out of the sky.

It's one thing to make a little money trading. It's a whole different animal to make enough to pull out your living expenses while still growing your bankroll.

The way most regular people become wealthy in the stock market is by feeding money into their brokerage account from other income sources and using that money to accumulate larger and larger positions. Doing this for 20-30 years, combined with a bit of luck, one can develop a nice net worth.

Of course, someone looking to get rich quick doesn't want to hear this story.

Exactly. Day trading is a grind.

The S&P500 futures will go up 10 points, down 15 points, up 5 points, often ending up exactly where it started.  It has a 'personality' and that can change periodically as the level of liquidity changes.

This sort of behavior a lot of the time is indicative of most trading being short term speculation on most days. That in itself helps you figure out how to play it.

Some days, there will be longer term positioning going on and then the market goes one way for most of the day.

So you have the way a market works, then you have the chance on a day to day basis that it will be heavily directional, then you have periods where the interest dies out (August, December).

So you know how it moves, then you have to recognize when the amount of participation is changing. It takes a lot of days experience to start to recognize the subleties of these changes.

Then you have to have an approach for the various types of days that are playing out plus recognizing that can change intra-day depending on either scheduled or unplanned announcements.

When the PIGS debt issues were at the forefront, I was in a trade on the Bund on Eurex and Angela Merkel opened her mouth and said something off the hip about Germany withdrawing support. My stop was 12 ticks (price move units) below the current market price and it shot through that and filled me 23 ticks below that stop. So I lost 230 Euros per contract more than my 'worst case' scenarion because some Gobby Bull Dyke opened her mouth.

Similarly with the Ukraine/Russia thing the markets got spooked a long time and you immediately had to change your game plan.

None of this is really fundamental or technical analysis.

Even when you know what to watch for, you will still get sideswiped.

[pedro01]

What if we started a Getbig Collective Trading Company where everyone puts in a small amount of money and then we all vote on what to trade for the day.  We can organize it with Pedro at the top.  Then we share the profits equally but require a certain percentage to be reinvested in the pool.

It's an interesting thought but like any trading, you have to think about who your competition is.

With stocks you have specialists/market makers that push the stock around every day. People who are setting the tone in that market and can push you out of position. They may be sitting on a lot of inventory in anticipation of a news release and offload to buyers who think the reaction to the news is that it'll go up. These people trade that stock day in/day out sitting on massive accounts and the markets pay them to provide liquidity. They also network so that they often have the inside track on the company.

Then you have large day traders that play news. One team I know consists of 5 people. 4 researchers and 1 trader. The account they trade is not massive, it's about USD$30M (everything is relative). They mostly trade earnings announcements. The researchers work day in/day out looking at news, executive stock purchases, short inventory situation, the overall industry they are in to get an idea of how an earnings announcement might play out. Many companies will consistenly underestimate so that they 'beat' on earnings day. Many companies tend to react the same way to earnings announcements too. So they look at all this and decide to maybe buy ahead of the announcement, maybe play the pre-market on annuoncement day (for a morning release) or they may play it intraday. They may also pass on it.

So onto us. Looking at a news announcement and saying 'lets trade this' is problematic. Like I say - the guys above might have done all their buying already and when the positive announcement comes in, they just sell to Joe Public who expect price to move up. It wont go one way all day. It may be that it goes up for 2 hours and then people start to offload. Ideally you need to be in before the bulk of people start buying and out before they start selling. You aren't moving the market, they are.

It is almost better to not pick a stock in play. To not go for the $2 move on the stock and just play for 10c on playing in stocks where there is little interest.

Where you could make money is off inside information but that's not usually going to be information you can pinpoint to having an impact on a specific day. Recently 'someone I know' was told something about a company a friend worked for. It was going to be purchases, so 'someone I know' brought cheap options with a fairly close expiry date. The trade made 300% on the original purchase price of the options. There was no way to know the date the announcement would be made (or even 100% that it would happen) and on the day of a buyout announcement - the stock price will immediately move to the buyout price and it's impossible to make money.

So bottom line is you really need time sensitive information that is not in the public domain OR lock horns with people that have a lot of money behind them.

[JBmadera]

What makes the difference in a good day trader?

Luck?

Work ethic?

Intelligence?

Methodology, with +ev, obv, discipline and capital (adequate for your scale of trading).  most people  fail because they aren't disciplined and/or are under-capitalized.

I have a set % of my portfolio allocated for day/swing trading.  I am retired (high tech career) and the money I make from trading supports my discretionary spending.

[Thin Lizzy]

It's an interesting thought but like any trading, you have to think about who your competition is.

Solid post.

This is why I stated earlier that the retail investor's best bet is a long term strategy.  That way, your competing against the buy side, namely the big mutual funds. Because of their size, the big funds have to spread the money out way more than they would like, and they often can't sell when they should because of the big price hit they would take.

So, in this area, a small investor has two advantages: the ability to take a more concentrated position, and the liquidity to sell at any time.

[2Thick]

Oh, I'm very familiar with it all. Traders will still often get crushed in bear markets - going to cash at the end of the day doesn't shield one from losses. No doubt many, many traders got crushed from Q4 '07 through Q1 '09. Being nimble doesn't mean you're always going to be right and always know when to change direction, how long to ride the same direction, etc. Anyone who's actually done it knows this.

Been investing over 20 years, managing others' $ over a decade.

Did a little day trading fulltime for a little while many years ago.

Still do an odd day or swing trade when an opportunity presents itself.

I've made the vast majority of my money over time by waking up and finding that my longs more often than not over time opened up higher than the day before and my shorts opened up lower than the day before. And by the power of compounding over time. Buying more when things are cheap. Dollar cost averaging. Value and growth.

It's all about increasing money over time for me and managing risk while doing so. Does me no good if I make 1000% over the next 3 years and lose it all in year 4.

Markets and individual securities tend to gap up or down from day to day. Going to cash at the end of the day is not the most efficient way to make $ over the long haul.

Transaction costs, realized losses, and STCG taxes eat money up. And most will need a passive outside source of income or else be retired with a nice nestegg to live on when they're sitting in front of the tv and PC all day every day. And the ego thing - the idea that one thinks they're smarter or more skilled or more "alpha" than everybody else is almost always suicidal sooner or later to the small investor.

And shorting is very risky. Shorting actual stocks (rather than using puts) is one thing I'm more inclined to do intraday. It really sucks to be short a stock overnight and wake up the next day and see they've jumped up 25, 50, or 100% or more on news that they've been bought out or had a positive clinical drug trial.

Intra-day traders are just looking for price movement one way or the other. They'd just as soon go short as long. The long term trend of the market doesn't mean anything, as they are always flat at the end of the day.

The real question to ask is how they got their initial bankroll. All these internet trading wizards act as though the money fell out of the sky.

It's one thing to make a little money trading. It's a whole different animal to make enough to pull out your living expenses while still growing your bankroll.

The way most regular people become wealthy in the stock market is by feeding money into their brokerage account from other income sources and using that money to accumulate larger and larger positions. Doing this for 20-30 years, combined with a bit of luck, one can develop a nice net worth.

Of course, someone looking to get rich quick doesn't want to hear this story.

[pedro01]

Oh, I'm very familiar with it all. Traders will still often get crushed in bear markets - going to cash at the end of the day doesn't shield one from losses. No doubt many, many traders got crushed from Q4 '07 through Q1 '09. Being nimble doesn't mean you're always going to be right and always know when to change direction, how long to ride the same direction, etc. Anyone who's actually done it knows this.

Been investing over 20 years, managing others' $ over a decade.

Did a little day trading fulltime for a little while many years ago.

Still do an odd day or swing trade when an opportunity presents itself.

I've made the vast majority of my money over time by waking up and finding that my longs more often than not over time opened up higher than the day before and my shorts opened up lower than the day before. And by the power of compounding over time. Buying more when things are cheap. Dollar cost averaging. Value and growth.

It's all about increasing money over time for me and managing risk while doing so. Does me no good if I make 1000% over the next 3 years and lose it all in year 4.

Markets and individual securities tend to gap up or down from day to day. Going to cash at the end of the day is not the most efficient way to make $ over the long haul.

Transaction costs, realized losses, and STCG taxes eat money up. And most will need a passive outside source of income or else be retired with a nice nestegg to live on when they're sitting in front of the tv and PC all day every day. And the ego thing - the idea that one thinks they're smarter or more skilled or more "alpha" than everybody else is almost always suicidal sooner or later to the small investor.

And shorting is very risky. Shorting actual stocks (rather than using puts) is one thing I'm more inclined to do intraday. It really sucks to be short a stock overnight and wake up the next day and see they've jumped up 25, 50, or 100% or more on news that they've been bought out or had a positive clinical drug trial.

Day trading is a very specific set of skills.

Being in another part of the industry does not mean that you have these skills. It's like saying you drive a bus for a living but you occasionally do the odd formula 1 race. Traders that 'just occasionally' day trade will be net losers on that activity.  Trading is a perishable skill too - take 6 months off and try to come back to it!

"crushed in a bear market" has very little relevence to day traders. It doesn't matter bear or bull.  The things that matter the most are volatility and reflexivity. Reflexivity is the term coined by Soros for the fact that a lot of market movements are caused by traders all reacting at the same time. Just like hitting your knee with a hammer, the market has points that will cause a predictable reaction. Technical analysis and fundamental analysis are almost useless in day trading. If you have 80,000 traders positioned between 1990-1991.50 on the ES, and it's been in that range for 2 hours, then when that range breaks you have a shit load of people caught offside. Some short term, some long term. The short term guys getting out of dodge WILL drive the maket action for a period.

"crushed when liquidity/volatility changes" is more appropriate. That is the killer.  That only becomes the killer once you get over all the other things in your way.

- the financial junk food inustry selling you crappy mechanical methods to trade off
- lack of understanding of what the markets actually are
- your own cognitive bias
- traders desire to be right/not close losses quickly
- self sabotage

[Henda]

Bass Generator: Post room

Booty: Front desk

Visualise Homosex: IR girl for all the public school wealth managers, nom saying.

Denari: janitor, in charge of licking up loads on the boardroom floor spat out by disrespectful whores, dreams of one day being tea boy

[2Thick]

Please read my posts more carefully if you're going to debate me. You're bad about just picking out a few statements from a few paragraphs and taking me way out of context.

I repeat that I did day trade fulltime for a while many years ago. I now make an occasional trade with a limited amount of money when there is good reason to do so - when I'm likely to make a substantial quick profit in a short period of time during market hours because of some unusual event.

How long have you been doing the trading thing again? What kind of track record do you have again? Have you ever lost money? I don't need proof - I'll take your word for it.

I've posted up my record repeatedly - 15% over 20 years, down 25% from Q4 '07 to Q1 '09, a couple other down years here and there and a few underperforming years here and there. Over $6 mil in taxable accounts, nearly $2 mil in more conservative retirment accounts. Started with $100k in taxable accounts '95, $0 in retirement accounts at around the same time. Of course I've contributed to each a great deal over time.

 I'm all about building and protecting wealth. I ain't in it to be macho or impress anyone.

Even the legendary junk bond trader and LBO genius Michael Milken had a few losing months during his 2 decades or so he was ruling the junk bond and corporate finance world. And it turned out that he was doing many illegal and borderline illegal things to have done so amazingly well.

I've posted up this vid before. Go to 2:20. HFT fund manager says he's only ever had a few losing days in a row. He could be telling the truth, but then again he wasn't doing it back around '08. Or he could be bullshitting or even running an elaborate ponzi scheme, which is my gut feeling - I hope I'm wrong on that.

Day trading is a very specific set of skills.

Being in another part of the industry does not mean that you have these skills. It's like saying you drive a bus for a living but you occasionally do the odd formula 1 race. Traders that 'just occasionally' day trade will be net losers on that activity.  Trading is a perishable skill too - take 6 months off and try to come back to it!

"crushed in a bear market" has very little relevence to day traders. It doesn't matter bear or bull.  The things that matter the most are volatility and reflexivity. Reflexivity is the term coined by Soros for the fact that a lot of market movements are caused by traders all reacting at the same time. Just like hitting your knee with a hammer, the market has points that will cause a predictable reaction. Technical analysis and fundamental analysis are almost useless in day trading. If you have 80,000 traders positioned between 1990-1991.50 on the ES, and it's been in that range for 2 hours, then when that range breaks you have a shit load of people caught offside. Some short term, some long term. The short term guys getting out of dodge WILL drive the maket action for a period.

"crushed when liquidity/volatility changes" is more appropriate. That is the killer.  That only becomes the killer once you get over all the other things in your way.

- the financial junk food inustry selling you crappy mechanical methods to trade off
- lack of understanding of what the markets actually are
- your own cognitive bias
- traders desire to be right/not close losses quickly
- self sabotage

[2Thick]

If you don't think a bear market will have an impact on most day traders (and just about everyone else), my guess is that you haven't traded during a bear market.

I do realize that volatility and a bull or bear market are not the same thing. Yes, volatility will crush many / most when they're on the wrong end of it, whether it's up or down or whether the market is bullish or bearish.

Bear markets in and of themselves will also crush most traders. To assume otherwise is to again assume that one will always be right and always know how to react all the time from tick to tick and beyond, and is to also overlook psychological and other factors.

[pedro01]

If you don't think a bear market will have an impact on most day traders (and just about everyone else), my guess is that you haven't traded during a bear market.

I do realize that volatility and a bull or bear market are not the same thing. Yes, volatility will crush many / most when they're on the wrong end of it, whether it's up or down or whether the market is bullish or bearish.

Bear markets in and of themselves will also crush most traders. To assume otherwise is to again assume that one will always be right and always know how to react all the time from tick to tick and beyond, and is to also overlook psychological and other factors.

If I'm spread trading the yield curve, how would a bear market make that any more difficult?

It's a common misconception that all day trading is directional, outright positions (buy low,sell high or sell high, buy low). Or that trading outrights is looking for large moves.

A lot of day trading is trading spreads/stat arb. Most pit traders now do little more than assume execution risk for large firms and lay off their positions against the electronic markets. They are trading for ticks.

I know a number of treasuries traders that trade size - 500 lots in one case and his average target is just 1 price increment on each trade.

Then there's market making techniques, playing the bid offer spread. I know a prop trader in Singapore that does nothing more than play the queue position on ultra-thick markets.

Perhaps you can explain why "Bear markets in and of themselves will also crush most traders" would apply to day traders employing these techniques.

[Viking11]

I used to, until I got "stuck" with shares that lost value quickly.

I never used stop losses.

I was consistently making profits using my methods which was a combination of somtimes fundamental analysis, and technical analysis.

The technical analysis tools I used was basic indicators, chart patterns e.g. "head and shoulders", and volume spread analysis in combination to make a trade decision.

You'd often find that market tops and bottoms coincide with huge volumes of shares traded. This is when the "herd" arrives and are lead to slaughter by the insiders. This is where it pays to learn about volume and hi low close spread analysis.

The biggest mistake I made was reading internet stock forums and all the bullshit people spout on there instead of following my own techniques and ignoring everyone else. I fell in love with the stock thanks to overenthusiastic uprampers on the forum. Big mistake.

Unfortunately the underlying commodity lost a lot of value and therefore the share price followed. And to think that I had made a quick 10% or so profit on these shares before being brainwashed by internet stock trading experts and decided for the first time to actually hold onto shares for the long term.

Anyway I am confident I will break even as the company progress is going good and the mining explorer should eventually become a producer. But in the mean time I've lost 3 years of trading opportunities.

Thanks for reading my story.

I tried Google translate to  try and understand this.. didn't work. Too bad, because i would like to understand this better.

[2Thick]

Well, maybe you'll be that one guy in history who will always on the net winning side of every trade no matter what happens from day to day and beyond with stocks, currencies, interest rates, commodities, etc, etc. But I'll maintain a healthy level of skepticism.

Just about everybody else is lucky to be right a little over 50% of the time if they're better than average, and are even more fortunate if they can make enough in realized profits and keep realized losses small enough to still profit after STCG taxes and transaction costs. This is more likely to occur if they've got lots of money to absorb these expenses and enough money to not have to worry about getting up and going to work every day.

Maybe you've got some sort of system that beats everyone else and enables you to always be on the right side of the trade or make a net profit on more complicated trades though anything and everything that happens. I know that if I'm long AAPL ahead of earnings and also have a put on it, I'll likely take a small net loss on the position if the stock is flat or doesn't move very much either way.

I just hope you're not one of those guys convincing dumb kids just out of college who are making a decent mid 5 figures or so that they can quit those good paying jobs that may offer them bright futures and make 6 figures guaranteed on their $10k life savings if they buy your day trading system.

If I'm spread trading the yield curve, how would a bear market make that any more difficult?

It's a common misconception that all day trading is directional, outright positions (buy low,sell high or sell high, buy low). Or that trading outrights is looking for large moves.

A lot of day trading is trading spreads/stat arb. Most pit traders now do little more than assume execution risk for large firms and lay off their positions against the electronic markets. They are trading for ticks.

I know a number of treasuries traders that trade size - 500 lots in one case and his average target is just 1 price increment on each trade.

Then there's market making techniques, playing the bid offer spread. I know a prop trader in Singapore that does nothing more than play the queue position on ultra-thick markets.

Perhaps you can explain why "Bear markets in and of themselves will also crush most traders" would apply to day traders employing these techniques.

[pedro01]

Well, maybe you'll be that one guy in history who will always on the net winning side of every trade no matter what happens from day to day and beyond with stocks, currencies, interest rates, commodities, etc, etc. But I'll maintain a healthy level of skepticism.

Just about everybody else is lucky to be right a little over 50% of the time if they're better than average, and are even more fortunate if they can make enough in realized profits and keep realized losses small enough to still profit after STCG taxes and transaction costs. This is more likely to occur if they've got lots of money to absorb these expenses and enough money to not have to worry about getting up and going to work every day.

Maybe you've got some sort of system that beats everyone else and enables you to always be on the right side of the trade or make a net profit on more complicated trades though anything and everything that happens. I know that if I'm long AAPL ahead of earnings and also have a put on it, I'll likely take a small net loss on the position if the stock is flat or doesn't move very much either way.

I just hope you're not one of those guys convincing dumb kids just out of college who are making a decent mid 5 figures or so that they can quit those good paying jobs that may offer them bright futures and make 6 figures guaranteed on their $10k life savings if they buy your day trading system.

Has someone made claims to never have losing trades?

You've claimed here to have been a full time day trader for a short time and that day traders lose money in bear markets. You have no explanation of why that would be the case. On most days, there's opportunities for day traders on both sides of the market. There was yesterday. There will be today. Yesterday the S&P futures moved up to a large offer at 78 and took on all the buying, buyers got caught offside and we rolled over back to the open. That open price got defended and we took a 25 point move up. The day prior, almost the exact same thing happened in reverse. Day traders had to trade the same market in the opposite direction on 2 consecutive days. This is the norm, bull or bear market.

Overall market direction just helps set bias for intraday traders but for trading outrights, the most important thing that sets the action on 9/10 days is the activity of short term speculators in that market. Watching for areas people get caught out but with an eye on prices that longer term players might be looking at.

In the prop world, there's a huge percentage trading spreads. How does spread trading intraday become more difficult in a bear market? How does stat arb become more difficult in a bear market? Market neutral intraday mean reversion strategies don't stop working because the underlying is trending in a different direction on a daily basis.