Swing/Day Traders

[Stingray Don]

That is fabulous!

For comparison, I highly recommend everyone take the short amount of time necessary to listen to this segment of RadioLab, mostly about program trading.

http://www.radiolab.org/story/267195-million-dollar-microsecond/

Spoiler alert: they had to ensure that all the fiber optic cables leading to data sources were the same length, since even at the speed of light, having a speed advantage of even a couple nanoseconds would give one computer an edge when dueling algorithms against others.

Makes me skeptical of an individual's ability to tease out market inefficiencies well enough to cover transaction costs. But the proof is in the pudding, so to speak, so if your data is accurate, congratulations!

Regardless, I still think slow and steady is a better way to go, but whatever floats your boat!

One thing you have to realize is that you cannot compete with high frequency traders from your home computer no matter how sophisticated. You have to know how to avoid playing in their sandbox.

 

[eaglepilot]

Good for you.

But imagine another investor that "intuited" back in 2007 that Apple was still a good company, with possible home run products still in its future, and simply bought the stock. Maybe just invested $10,000 and sat back and did virtually nothing over those 8 years except maybe keep an eye on the tech world to try to "intuit" if Apple ever "lost it" and was no longer worth holding. As an exercise, I encourage anyone to look up the stock price then and now and see by what multiple their investment would have increased. Oh, and don't forget the dividends Apple paid along the way.

.

While I agree that a buy and hold strategy for Apple seems like the way to go, it is not without heartache.

Apple has lost 25 percent or more six times in the past 10 years alone. That was after its meteoric rise. During its worst week, it was cut in half, falling 51 percent. It saw similar damage during its worst month and quarter as well — getting cut in half in each time period.

I'm not saying that you should not invest in good companies, but it is not a straight ahead growth/profit story.

More here..http://wapo.st/1tqHQ65

 

[docmirror]

SUN Micro
DEC
Wang

Billions lost on what were once tech darlings. Hindsight is always 20/20. There are others.

 

[cirrusmx]

There's a need for day trading?

yes, it provides liquidity to the markets.

 

[denverpilot]

That is fabulous!



For comparison, I highly recommend everyone take the short amount of time necessary to listen to this segment of RadioLab, mostly about program trading.



http://www.radiolab.org/story/267195-million-dollar-microsecond/



Spoiler alert: they had to ensure that all the fiber optic cables leading to data sources were the same length, since even at the speed of light, having a speed advantage of even a couple nanoseconds would give one computer an edge when dueling algorithms against others.



Makes me skeptical of an individual's ability to tease out market inefficiencies well enough to cover transaction costs. But the proof is in the pudding, so to speak, so if your data is accurate, congratulations!



Regardless, I still think slow and steady is a better way to go, but whatever floats your boat!

I had also read a similar article about the high speed trading stuff and the computer engineering involved, but couldn't find the reference. I have similar skepticism about trading technicals or even against technicals because there are some really really smart folks who wrote algorithms to "see" you (and others) doing it, and they'll beat you every time with a counter-trade.

Yeah, I also know trading and counter-trading don't exactly work that way, but the point is, your own brokerage firm and a bejillion others are actively working against you. Not enough to bankrupt you (although that happens, too) but hard enough to make you lose a little every time you play. And that's on top of the standard casino stuff of taking the house's cut off the top with fees.

It seems really silly to think you can win over the long term at a rigged game. OTOH, if you like the odds of a particular professional and you're willing to afford them their lifestyle so they can add your money to their "bejillions under management" stats so they can play their reindeer games and you found one that's at least beating inflation, you're doing fine.

If you're one of the few who easily see through to what the next faster version of "the game" is and you enjoy ****ing away a lot of time doing it, go for it. Everyone needs a pastime. If you're good enough at it for a while, you can cash out and write a book about it and enjoy royalties for the rest of your life.

That's what all of the best "investors" eventually seem to do. If they get really lucky, they get a little pop of fame and CNBC lets them pitch the book in a thirty second pitch on TV.

Or they get their own TV show and continue to make mediocre trades and act goofy on camera to avoid the next heart attack. (Cramer - who's entertaining as hell but really doesn't have that great a track record as a trader after the rules changed and he couldn't get insider information anymore - he even admits as much in his books. Which were a fun read. From the library. For free. Well, from
my taxes which I was going to pay anyway.)

 

[denverpilot]

I do not want this to come across as bragging, just as the end result of a lot of long term investing.



As a caveat, a list like this will be skewed towards winners, which I tend to let run, and away from losers and stagnaters, which tend to get sold.



Also, I've been in some of these positions for 30 years.



Without divulging holdings or dollar amounts, here's the "gain/loss" column of the 25 stocks I currently hold:

Heh. I love charts like that. Can't tell which ones are thirty year and which ones are one year, which makes the percentages kinda useless.

Some of those percentages are terrible numbers over thirty years and didn't keep up with inflation. ;-)

Obviously you're up over thirty years. That's good. Nothing wrong with being up. But you said you wanted brain dead investing so let's ask these questions...

The Dow was roughly $1200 in 1985. Did you beat it?

The S&P was roughly $370. How about that one?

If you'd have put every dollar into an index fund of either one, where would you be?

(I already did the math and won't give it away. Maybe you did great, maybe you didn't. My point here is that a percentage graph of stuff going up over thirty years and the losses and the stagnant ones removed, really doesn't indicate whether you beat the house or not. If you "dumped the losers", you still lost something, and it's not reflected in the chart.)

The chart is a feel-good chart. And I'm fine with feel-good charts if they make you happy. But it doesn't tell me if your all-inclusive numbers really beat the market or not. Right?

[edit: I won't share the price I sold Apple at, but let's just say I thought they'd jumped the shark when they released the Cube. They had. But they fixed it. Haha. Oh well. I still made money. But not nearly as much as I could have. Lesson learned in scaling out once you're playing with the house's money.]

 

[DJTorrente]

I used to listen to Bob Brinker on the radio. His main shtick was dollar cost averaging; low overhead (pushed Vanguard, big time); and market timing at a macro level, not day trading.

Anyway, I think it was his show when heard the following about day trading: There are 210 working (trading) days in a typical year. Its not uncommon for a day trader to take 20 positions in a typical day. That's 20 buys, 20 sells, or 40 transactions. If you pay $10 per transaction, your yearly overhead is $84,000. If you make an average of 10% return on your investments, you need a capital base of $840,000 just to make enough money to pay your trading fees. If you're REALLY good, and can make 20%, then your net is 10% and you're essentially 50-50 partners with your brokerage, with you taking all the capital risk.

If you had nearly a million to invest, aren't there easier ways to make 10% on your money?

 

[Bill Watson]

There are ways to consistently beat the market but it involves a lot of OPM (anybody remember the OPM scandal?)
25 Top Hedge Fund Managers

After a bit of naive investing years ago, I went exclusively to broad market indices for buy and hold. Now I'm slowly burning it off but found that sell flexibility is critical... Like no selling for 3 years following the last crash.

To adopt such a strategy one must be optimistic about the future. If you believe that an unrecoverable world wide financial collapse is always around the corner... well, good luck with that.

 

[airdale]

yes, it provides liquidity to the markets.

Actually not. The market volume generated by the kind of individuals' day trading we're talking about here is infinitesimal compared to market volumes that exceed a billion shares daily. Market makers provide liquidity. High frequency traders claim to do so as well, but it is questionable whether whatever they may add is really needed.

(OT: The risks of HFT are also thought by many to be substantial. Personally, I think they ought to be shut down by something like a 100% tax on profits made with holding periods less than a certain number of hours.)

 

[Apache123]

(OT: The risks of HFT are also thought by many to be substantial. Personally, I think they ought to be shut down by something like a 100% tax on profits made with holding periods less than a certain number of hours.)

The same was said about using the telegraph when it was invented, and then the telephone, then the internet with many things in between (hell even shoe size was regulated at one point). Just like aviation: new technology scares those who don't understand it. When Foreflight came out on the iPad there were tons of naysayers who themselves use it today. Same with the wave of experimental/home-built aircraft we see today: people who used to dismiss it as a bad thing now stand by it as though they always had.

Modern HFT is in the same boat. Those who don't understand "the new way" are afraid of it and want it removed.

 

[denverpilot]

The bigger question for HFT is "what value does it actually add to the market?" Nothing really. Either it's about investing or it's about playing computer timing games. Which is it?

 

[Apache123]

The bigger question for HFT is "what value does it actually add to the market?" Nothing really. Either it's about investing or it's about playing computer timing games. Which is it?

The main thing I'd say it adds is a stabilizing equilibrium. Large investor pump and dumps are having less of an impact than before. The investigation into the 2010 flash crash is showing that it was an individual capable of pushing mass volume versus the initial outcry that it was due to HFT; just the opposite, the evidence is suggesting that HFT brought the market back to normal levels in a much shorter period of time than would have happened previously. The old timers I work with say the bid/ask spreads are tighter than ever across the board and that is making it easier for smaller brokers/traders to avoid the collusion which used to be commonplace in the pit (their words, I've never dealt with that. I'm a tech guy not a trader).

 

[denverpilot]

The main thing I'd say it adds is a stabilizing equilibrium. Large investor pump and dumps are having less of an impact than before. The investigation into the 2010 flash crash is showing that it was an individual capable of pushing mass volume versus the initial outcry that it was due to HFT; just the opposite, the evidence is suggesting that HFT brought the market back to normal levels in a much shorter period of time than would have happened previously. The old timers I work with say the bid/ask spreads are tighter than ever across the board and that is making it easier for smaller brokers/traders to avoid the collusion which used to be commonplace in the pit (their words, I've never dealt with that. I'm a tech guy not a trader).

Fair enough. Sounds like it both stabilizes and destabilizes a market that's not about investing anymore, though. An investment of a few hundred milliseconds is just a game. It has no significant value to anyone other than the gamekeepers.

 

[JHW]

personally I'd like to see a trade be required to settle before it could be sold. Introduce a couple day's worth of delay into these transactions

 

[FastEddieB]

Fair enough. Sounds like it both stabilizes and destabilizes a market that's not about investing anymore, though. An investment of a few hundred milliseconds is just a game. It has no significant value to anyone other than the gamekeepers.

Briefly, I don't see how it all somehow works against long term investors. Specifically, I question the idea it's a rigged system that the "little guy" can no longer succeed in.

I'll try to post more thoughts later, but if one sees value in a company and that company prospers and the stock does very well, what difference do all the little little up and down moves make? Zoom out and all the HFT and program trading moves fade into background "noise".

And it should not be ignored that successful companies often pay dividends. Price goes up, price goes down, program/HFT trading causes little "jiggles", and all the while profits are distributed to shareholders, many of whom count on those dividends to help fund retirement, either directly or indirectly. None of these payouts usually go to "players", who also have the privilege of paying higher tax rates on short term gains if and when they have any.

I'll stipulate it may make day/swing trading very difficult for an individual, but has negligible effect on long term investors and their decisions.

 

[airdale]

The same was said about using the telegraph when it was invented, and then the telephone, then the internet with many things in between (hell even shoe size was regulated at one point). Just like aviation: new technology scares those who don't understand it. When Foreflight came out on the iPad there were tons of naysayers who themselves use it today. Same with the wave of experimental/home-built aircraft we see today: people who used to dismiss it as a bad thing now stand by it as though they always had.

Modern HFT is in the same boat. Those who don't understand "the new way" are afraid of it and want it removed.

Wow. Apache, you should really see your doctor. There are drugs that can help you restore your grasp on reality.

Foreflight is not the telegraph and HST is not the internet.

HST is one of a near-infinite number of schemes that people have cooked up all through history that have the same objective: To extract wealth from society without delivering anything of value in return

In this respect it is hardly unique or revolutionary. Even within the investment industry it is not even close to being unique. Witness current events: all of the "professional investment advisors" who are desperately resisting being classified as fiduciaries because it will make illegal to screw their clients.

As to whether status-quo HST is harmless, IMO it kind of depends on your viewpoint. Assuming the total profit of the HST players is positive (I don't know if it is or not), that profit is coming at the expense of other investors and traders who are getting no benefit from it. But again, viewed in perspective of the whole kleptocratic industry it is probably not a big deal.

The the thing that is unique about HST is this: These boys are using fast computer programs in a market that is chaotic (word used in the technical sense). This means that the results of the activity in a macro sense cannot be predicted by the participants or by anyone else, for that matter.

In normal trading, human judgment is a factor but with HST no judgment is involved. It is simply heuristics and algorithms, salted with some significant number of programming bugs, making decisions at microsecond speeds. Inductive reasoning ("nothing bad has happened yet") is dangerous, just as an inductive conclusion that there are no black swans ("I have seen hundreds of swans and have never seen a black one.") is fallacious.

So there is significant danger with no correspondingly significant benefit. That's a bad situation and it is unfortunate that the HST community will almost certainly buy themselves enough legislators and regulators to enable them to perpetuate the situation.

Edit: .. to perpetuate the situation until the bomb explodes, which is a very likely event.

 

[Apache123]

Wow. Apache, you should really see your doctor. There are drugs that can help you restore your grasp on reality.

Foreflight is not the telegraph and HST is not the internet.

HST is one of a near-infinite number of schemes that people have cooked up all through history that have the same objective: To extract wealth from society without delivering anything of value in return

In this respect it is hardly unique or revolutionary. Even within the investment industry it is not even close to being unique. Witness current events: all of the "professional investment advisors" who are desperately resisting being classified as fiduciaries because it will make illegal to screw their clients.

As to whether status-quo HST is harmless, IMO it kind of depends on your viewpoint. Assuming the total profit of the HST players is positive (I don't know if it is or not), that profit is coming at the expense of other investors and traders who are getting no benefit from it. But again, viewed in perspective of the whole kleptocratic industry it is probably not a big deal.

The the thing that is unique about HST is this: These boys are using fast computer programs in a market that is chaotic (word used in the technical sense). This means that the results of the activity in a macro sense cannot be predicted by the participants or by anyone else, for that matter.

In normal trading, human judgment is a factor but with HST no judgment is involved. It is simply heuristics and algorithms, salted with some significant number of programming bugs, making decisions at microsecond speeds. Inductive reasoning ("nothing bad has happened yet") is dangerous, just as an inductive conclusion that there are no black swans ("I have seen hundreds of swans and have never seen a black one.") is fallacious.

So there is significant danger with no correspondingly significant benefit. That's a bad situation and it is unfortunate that the HST community will almost certainly buy themselves enough legislators and regulators to enable them to perpetuate the situation.

Edit: .. to perpetuate the situation until the bomb explodes, which is a very likely event.

First, good job opening with insults.

Second, there is zero difference in computers and humans performing arbitrage between say the underlying a put and a call, or between exchanges, etc. The only difference there is speed.

This is just another job being taken over by machine.

You'll be a fun one to have around when general artificial intelligence emerges.

 

[airdale]

... there is zero difference in computers and humans performing arbitrage between say the underlying a put and a call, or between exchanges, etc. ...

True, but a non sequitur. The HFT universe is not even close to being limited to simple arbitrage. The fact that HFT activity comprises the majority of US trading tells you that even if you've never read a word about what HFT is. There simply cannot be that many arbitrage opportunities.

I would be very happy to see HFT activity limited to simple arbitrage. That would take the majority of risk off the table.

 

[eaglepilot]

Some don't think that HFT needs to be regulated, let the "invisible hand" take care the problem. More regulation means less freedom, isn't that how the political mantra goes?


http://onforb.es/1C3p2h5

FWIW the newest investment craze is scraping Twitter for stock mentions, and trying to enter a trade before the crowd.

 

[Jimmy cooper]

Note about books:

If you were a brilliant trader, and could amass a fortune trading, why would you take the time out to write a book about Wall Street?

Do you need the royalties? Is it a strange form of diversification?

Or do you just know there are a lot of desperate people out there who will buy books about Wall Street? Way more than will ever know how to trade?

Or you could be mike Lewis who has written a very consise , informative bestseller about HFT. Well worth reading. It's called " flash boys" . he's the same one who wrote the best seller " the big short" ) he worked on Wall Street for sometime. Well versed. Excellent writer. ( he's probably made a lot of money as a successful writer, maybe more than you.)

 

[Jimmy cooper]

Even after the taxpayers took a good screwing at the hands of Wall Street, they still go back for more! Amazing.

 

[airdale]

Some don't think that HFT needs to be regulated, let the "invisible hand" take care the problem. More regulation means less freedom ...

I tend libertarian so in most cases I would agree with this approach. The problem, however, is that while the "invisible hand" may kill or maim HFT-ers at some point, the risk is that there will be a lot of collateral damage to non-participants. The "flash crash" is a miniature example of what can happen. Search "flash crash" and "high frequency trading" and you will find things like this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gino-vicci/high-frequency-trading_b_1504418.html

That article contains a hilarious comment by Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway fame: "Allowing high-frequency computer traders into the stock market is like letting rats in the granary."

Another quotation in the article reiterates the point that I made earlier, that HFT does not provide any value in exchange for the wealth that it captures.

But one thing that is not discussed widely is the fact (IMO) that HFT software is going to be quite buggy, sometimes not behaving at all like its creators expected. The reason for this is that thorough testing of this kind of software is impossible. To test, it would be necessary to accurately model future market behavior, something that the industry has been failing at for years. The usual Monte Carlo modeling, Gaussian and Poisson distributions and the like, is known to be inappropriate. For example, market probability distributions have long non-Gaussian (aka "fat") tails that admit things like the 1987 and subsequent crashes. In addition, the nice neat statistical stuff is based on the idea that events are independent --- the probability of a given event is independent of prior events. What could be less accurate when talking about the stock market?

The heuristics are also chasing a moving target. Essentially, each HFT machine is trying to guess what other machines are going to do. So to the extent a machine's guess is accurate, it will change the behavior of the other machines and the guessing heuristic will have to be modified. (The guessing is recursive too, but we won't go into that hall of mirrors.) This also virtually guarantees bugs. Bugs increase the danger.

So ... I'm not libertarian on this one. I'll take risk when there is commensurate likelihood of benefit, but here is risk without benefit. No thanks.

 

[FastEddieB]

Even after the taxpayers took a good screwing at the hands of Wall Street, they still go back for more! Amazing.

Personally, Wall Street has been largely responsible for my ability to retire in my 50's and still have nice things - including an airplane - and not subsist on $13,000/yr from Social Security.

I never felt I got "a good screwing" - at least not from Wall Street! :wink2:

Anyway, your mileage may obviously differ!

 

[eaglepilot]

Or you could be mike Lewis who has written a very consise , informative bestseller about HFT. Well worth reading. It's called " flash boys" . he's the same one who wrote the best seller " the big short" ) he worked on Wall Street for sometime. Well versed. Excellent writer. ( he's probably made a lot of money as a successful writer, maybe more than you.)

I especially liked "Liars Poker" by Lewis, a bit dated but many of the sentiments are still true today.

There is a saying that I've heard, that there are Teachers (Authors) and there are Traders, and one makes money teaching, and the other makes money trading.

There are a number of good websites and blogs that are all FREE that will teach you all you need to know. If I had to recommend only one site/teacher it would be Adam H Grimes, The Art and Science of Trading.

http://adamhgrimes.com/TAAS/

The reason I point him out, is that he is FREE, always will be, and his stuff has resonated with me. I always go back to the lessons for a refresher, and I am never disappointed. You have to register, but he never spams.

His presentation might not be the best, but the info is...

 

[Jimmy cooper]

Personally, Wall Street has been largely responsible for my ability to retire in my 50's and still have nice things - including an airplane - and not subsist on $13,000/yr from Social Security.

I never felt I got "a good screwing" - at least not from Wall Street! :wink2:

Anyway, your mileage may obviously differ!

In other words you think Wall Street is running an efficient manner, respectful of the smaller investor and mindful of its fiduciary responsibilitys? If so you really need to read more. These books I mentioned would be an excellent start for you. You may also feel Wall Streets constant bleeting that " there are too many rules that restrict it" are true. You'd be wrong. It's deregulation that caused the 2007 debacle, not " too many rules". Alan Greenspan , a shill for Wall Street, finally had to admit he was wrong. Wall Street privatizes profits, socializes losses, ........always. Glass stegal is a Classic example.

 

[jmp470]

I day trade and swing trade depending on the time I can dedicate to each trade. When day trading, I can consistently make $150 per day per trade. I have an 87% trade success rate and keep in depth logs of my trading as I've progressed to the next level according to the IRS and trading has directly affected how I file my taxes. Understand that there are rules to day trading, and to be considered a day trader by the SEC, you will need to have $25K sitting in an account somewhere. The $25K is the minimum required for the account too, so in reality, you will want closer to $50K to have a nice margin for error... as you will initially make a ton of errors ( I Know I did). Once you have the money, you have to decide what type of trader you are and decide if you want to specialize in a certain sector of the market or follow over all trends, as following every stock is darn near impossible. Also, as others have stated, if you do this, you will be chasing a trade.... And know that when you submit your buy order, a computer is submitting its sell Short order!

For Day trading: I'm into the business cycle of the market and seasonality plays. I also favor Gold, Oil and Bio-tech stocks, which are all more defensive in nature. However, I made my initial money trading Apple.

At heart, I'm a fundamentals guy, so I look for a decent company that has been beaten down. I prefer one that is under performing its peers, but is still financially sound. I prefer the company to be around .2-.3 Book Value and then I hold these companies until they correct their deficiencies and trade at BV or more. This takes patients and I have a significant fluctuation in my net-worth doing this.

There are tons of books out there.... read as much as you can... and realize they are all crap.... As soon as someone finds a way to make money in the market, everyone exploits that... Thus, by the time the book is published, the material is outdated.

You can use technical analysis, but every trader is looking at the same chart trying to figure it out and get in on the action. You can play the morning spike, the morning fade, the end of the day short cover rally, or the follow through over night... but, know that they are quick trades.... most of the time, you don't even have time to pee....

Trading as a profession is just like any management job I ever had. Decisions and actions, spark a reaction that you must account for. The best traders I know, treat trading as a job and do not fall in love with a stock. As that is easiest way to lose it all!

 

[denverpilot]

I day trade and swing trade depending on the time I can dedicate to each trade. When day trading, I can consistently make $150 per day per trade. I have an 87% trade success rate ...

So how many of those (including research time and all time necessary for each trade) can you realistically do per day?

That number would make figuring out your maximum profit per year, fairly easy.

I assume they become progressively harder to make as you add more of them, in any particular day.

A quick look says roughly 250 days if you traded every day the market is open. One article Google offered on the topic (which came with a pop-up : "Do you want to learn to Day Trade?"... Well we know how that website makes its money...) said you'll lose roughly 30 of those days to various reasons.

220 days * $150 = $33K before taxes. Assuming one good trade per day. So how often would you say it is two, three, four, or even five good trades per day?

It's just interesting as a question, is all. Some people could match their annual professional salary in another field, with one good trade a day, most would need more. And they would have to hit it consistently and have zero losses. Those losses in the beginning hurt the overall profit number a LOT for each loss until you've been at it, say... Five to ten years. It takes a long time for that average to come back up.

An 87% success rate today is great, but you removed the loss rate early on to get that number to look that good, correct? What's the percentage since start date?

(This is a game even the mutual funds play. X% since the new manager came on, or X percent since the shiny new fund was started, etc. It covers up the manager's losses over the full time frame of their career. Fund has poor numbers, close it and start a new one for new statistics. Same manager, same money pool. Better numbers for marketing purposes.)

 

[FastEddieB]

With an 87% success rate, if one consistently reinvested the after-tax gains, how long would it take to get to compound the gains up to $1,000,000?

To $1,000,000,000?

To all the money in the world?

As denverpilot intimated, there's almost invariably a flaw somewhere in stats like that. Usually cherry picking data, often subconsciously. Like Taleb warns of in "The Black Swan", often disaster lurks somewhere in the 13% failure rate, with one or a few blowouts canceling all of the incremental gains - or more.

 

[JHW]

87%, heck, i can top that, I'm up on more than 90% of my investments. the fly in the ointment is that the smaller % of losing "trades" include a couple that have losses more than all the others, plus move a decimal point

my experience is that people who make money investing don't talk about it much. People who shout about how great they are doing are almost always using some "new math"

in the end I feel a lot better owning dirt than pieces of paper. Everybody needs dirt sooner or later and you can't just create more of it in a secondary offering

 

[jmp470]

It's not 87% for the year.... It is an 87% success rate. If you don't like what you see, or have crappy comments.... Please ignore me, as someone is asking about a topic I enjoy talking about, and I'm willing to do so... But, I'm no expert...

I included some tools that I use, but I could not upload excel documents, so I cut and pasted them into power point, then made it into a PDF....

A monthly log of my trades, January 15.... Must be cherry picked (as other stated...)

A seasonality chart that I developed, as I said, I like seasonality and business cycle trends.

A trading plan on Aria from August 2014. and a chart to show you what I look for, with the green dot, on where I started my play.


Remember, for every trade you place, you must have an entry and exit plan! If a trade is going against you, get out.... Don't hold a loser, UNLESS you know the fundamentals of the stock and can afford to suffer paper red...

I hope this helps, probably not.... but, I'm willing to answer questions for you.

 

[jmp470]

So how many of those (including research time and all time necessary for each trade) can you realistically do per day?

That number would make figuring out your maximum profit per year, fairly easy.

I assume they become progressively harder to make as you add more of them, in any particular day.

A quick look says roughly 250 days if you traded every day the market is open. One article Google offered on the topic (which came with a pop-up : "Do you want to learn to Day Trade?"... Well we know how that website makes its money...) said you'll lose roughly 30 of those days to various reasons.

220 days * $150 = $33K before taxes. Assuming one good trade per day. So how often would you say it is two, three, four, or even five good trades per day?

It's just interesting as a question, is all. Some people could match their annual professional salary in another field, with one good trade a day, most would need more. And they would have to hit it consistently and have zero losses. Those losses in the beginning hurt the overall profit number a LOT for each loss until you've been at it, say... Five to ten years. It takes a long time for that average to come back up.

An 87% success rate today is great, but you removed the loss rate early on to get that number to look that good, correct? What's the percentage since start date?

(This is a game even the mutual funds play. X% since the new manager came on, or X percent since the shiny new fund was started, etc. It covers up the manager's losses over the full time frame of their career. Fund has poor numbers, close it and start a new one for new statistics. Same manager, same money pool. Better numbers for marketing purposes.)

worst trade of my life was AMRN in 2013: had 11,000 shares at $8.8 and sold it for $2 costing me $74,800.

Best trades of my life were AAPL: Apple, 1,000 shares at $90 and sold at $644, this is before the 7 for 1 split. Before that was apple from 2004 (when I bought my first iMac) to 2008. These trades Grossed me out at over $1M.... which my first wife got most of!!!!