Day Trading

You would be shocked how much they pay for analysts out of college (6 figures usually!) for NYC offices. There are so many funds these days that the demand is extremely high. That being said, the recent choppiness in the credit markets may have led to a pullback in hedge fund analyst demand.

In order to find these guys, you are just going ot have to do some legwork. Try a company on the web called Glocap.

Market timing is very tricky business. You have to be right twice. You have to know when to get in & then when to get back out again. If you wait for the market to go down, and then get out, all you are doing is locking in your losses. Then you wait for the market to go up for a few days, and then get in. Now you've missed out on a few days gains.

Market timers increase their risk, while lowering their returns. It is really the worst of both worlds.

Personally I would rather take advantage of a down market, and buy my mutual funds and/or stocks at a discount.

If you're talking only a few a days, then use short term EMA. EMA is more sensitive to price changes.

There are technical market sites that provide technical indicators that predict when a stock is over bought or over sold. Many traders use those. That limits trading to once every couple of weeks or even a month or so. Some stocks such as oil stock for example are real good candidates for that type of trading.

Others, such as myself, are fundamentalists. We will buy and hold a stock for years maybe. The daily and weekly cycles do not mean too much to us other than perhaps providing an opportune buying point. After all why settle for 2 or 3 points when there are 20 or 30 to be reaped, maybe more?

There is also the tax question to consider. Taxes on short term trades are considerably more than long term. Another point to consider is as long as a stock is not sold there are no taxes to pay. If a company is a growing company, why sell at all?

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.

What it seems like you are trying to do is get a distribution from the fund like a dividend or special payment. Trust me, you wont come out on top with this strategy. What you have to remember is the purchase & sell fees involved. Assuming you are buying B shares, you could pay upwards of 5-8% on the sale amount, it costs nothing to buy in. In addition, many funds have an early withdrawal fee of about 2-4% if you sell before 90 days. If you are doing A shares, you have the same problem but you are paying the fee up front, so you actually are working with less than what you put in. No load funds also have the early cash out fee. Then lets talk taxes on the short term gains. Then talk brokerage fees.

You would not only have to make a monster sized gain on your principal, but that must also be a sizable distribution that you need to get in order for it to make sense. Does not sound like a good idea for such a short term play.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_analysis

And you can test your ideas here:

http://www.wealth-lab.com/

If you have time to do it yourself, stick to highly rated mutual funds and ETFs. The key is to be diversified by owning large companies, small companies, bonds, international, etc. in all different industries. This allows you to be a long term investor and ride out short term volatility. Mutual funds and ETFs are the best way to accomplish this.