Day Trading

Trading is not an easy road to wealth. There are plenty of statistics to say that most people who go down it fail (90%+). I'm not going to say how much I make per week, but I will say I'm in the 10% (or less) who have succeeded. To me, you need two things to succeed in trading. #1 is a curiousity of how things work. Most good traders will tell you that "systems" are constantly breaking down (i.e., what works today won't necessarily work tomorrow). If you are going to be a successful trader, you are going to be constantly doing research for new things that work. If you don't enjoy the process of researching new ideas, I think you are doomed from the start. #2, you've got to be willing to learn how to handle emotions. Things are going to go against you, and at least in my experience, humans are wired to want to get away from the pain of a trade going against you. How you deal with these moments will define a lot of how successful you are going to be trading. Make a long story short…if you are looking for an easy road to wealth…this isn't it. If you like the game, and can't learn enough about it…then you will eventually find a way to succeed.

Have you read John Carter's book yet? Mastering the Trade.

Also read Tom Busby's book, Winning the Day Trading Game.

They'll give you a good primer. Fantastic books to get you started. After that, you'll have a much better sense on what and where to go next.

One option would be to work with a mentor. Todd Mitchell looks interesting at tmitchell.com or tradingconcepts.com for trading.

Though if you go to daytrading, you'll need to practice a lot more than a couple of weeks. Most successful day traders I know practiced at least months before being somewhat successful as there's all sorts of nuances, the shorter the timeframe that you trade in.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Hope that helps!

You could just send me all your money instead, it would be quicker!

Suspect that if it is in a book it will fail because of the pump & dump scam. The successful traders will know about such methods and will deliberately game them, thereby helping themselves to your money.

Other than that, stick only to volatile stocks, and good, er, luck!

EVERY casino game has the odds in favor of the house. You may win in the short term, but if you want to make it a career, you're going to end up losing money. The exception MAY be tournament games like Texas Hold-Em where the house has no stake in the game and you're competing only against other players.

Capital market trading can be a viable way to make money, if you learn enough about it to do it well. That can take some time and a lot of study and effort and particularly a LOT of discipline.

Trading is not an easy road to wealth. There are plenty of statistics to say that most people who go down it fail (90%+). I'm not going to say how much I make per week, but I will say I'm in the 10% (or less) who have succeeded. To me, you need two things to succeed in trading. #1 is a curiousity of how things work. Most good traders will tell you that "systems" are constantly breaking down (i.e., what works today won't necessarily work tomorrow). If you are going to be a successful trader, you are going to be constantly doing research for new things that work. If you don't enjoy the process of researching new ideas, I think you are doomed from the start. #2, you've got to be willing to learn how to handle emotions. Things are going to go against you, and at least in my experience, humans are wired to want to get away from the pain of a trade going against you. How you deal with these moments will define a lot of how successful you are going to be trading. Make a long story short…if you are looking for an easy road to wealth…this isn't it. If you like the game, and can't learn enough about it…then you will eventually find a way to succeed.

The game of any stock trading is to MANAGE the risk first before seeking ang gains. This has nothing to do with diversification.

Ask yourself how much money you can get back if the stock market crash. This will help you NOT lose your $$ easily.

You may say me ULTRA conservative, but I view it is very important for any investors to invest their $$ responsibly.

Take a look on Google, this stock can lose 90% of its value if market is collasped. The cash per share is less than $37 without any debt. In the worst case(like wars and major economic disastous), the investors are willing pay $37/share.

You need to keep the powder dry, keep 20% in cash and 5% in QID(Nasdaq Ultra Short) or BEARX(bear fund) to protect your investments during sudden drop in equity market.

You only can trade 75% of total. Trust me, this will make you sleep very well during the night.

I wanted to but when I told my wife that idea went over like a lead balloon.
I would try cnbc.com and play the fantasy stock game and see how you do

In day trading, you will spend 6 hours a day doing nothing but losing money most of the time.

I guarantee I will out-perform you by just buying a stock, doing the things I love to do while you sit around and make dumb trades Cramer told you to make and lose money.

It's a suckers game and you should get out. Between the record keeping, the taxes, the stress, it's just another way of gambling your money away while giving commission to the brokers.

And Ameritrade is so NOT the way to go when day trading. Please stop and either get help or learn to buy and hold.

Erik

Ever watch a football, basketball, or baseball game and watch the ball make "a bad hop"? It sometimes makes or breaks a game. It sometimes makes or breaks a trader.

I don't day trade, I find regular trading too iffy than to try to make a living at it pegging big movers in the morning and selling them off at a profit at the end of the day. Even with my limited trading, there is all this good news, so you buy–but the price drops, or vice versa. There was good news recently about Gateway (GTW), so I bought and it went up, but then it started dropping, but then it started rising, but then it started dropping–big. So I sold, still at a profit but not as much as if I sold a couple of days earlier. Then, after selling, the price shot up, almost 20 cents. But there was no news, so just as I started to get back in, thinking that there was some news about to be made public, the stock then dropped, to less than I had sold it to. I came out okay, but if I was day trading, constantly on the wrong side of the guess of the direction, there was something like about five losing trades I would possibly have made to more than wipe out the one or two profitable ones. Day trading can be really, really dangerous. Regular trading is hard enough.

No such animal. Day trading is a guessing game prepare to be more wrong than right.