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7/24/2012
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St. Paul-ish, MN
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Edited Date/Time
7/27/2015 6:19pm
Anybody on here play around with stock/day trading?
I've dabbled a small amount with small purchases and sales, but I've always been interested in trying to go a little bigger. Any tips?
I've dabbled a small amount with small purchases and sales, but I've always been interested in trying to go a little bigger. Any tips?
The Shop
I started trading in the spring of 2007 WITH NO GUIDANCE and promptly made a 60% return on my money in 3 or 4 months. Thats right a 60% return!!! I was hooked and thought, "THIS IS EASY AND I HAVE A REAL KNACK FOR IT....Then the market turned south, yada yada yada and the next thing you know I've LOST 50% of the money I started with!!! Since then I've kept at it, mostly in the winter when work is slow and Ive gotten to be over the past few years that trading a lot I can make a very few bucks. Did I beat the market? No. Did I lose money? No.
However, this year has gone bad as I cant seem to make a decent trade to save my life. The market is flopping all over the place going sideways and I quit trading in April. And like a gambler addicted to the next roll of the dice, I'll pick it back up this fall with a renewed vigor and positive attitude.
Ive day traded, swing traded, gone long and a few years ago I started shorting stocks. ETF's, penny stocks, big names, little names, heavily traded stocks, lightly traded stocks. Ive targeted sectors, traded the news, studied technical analysis, blah blah blah.
Set a stop loss of 10% on all your trades. Meaning that if the share price goes down you sell and ONLY lose 10%. If you do not you may lose much more or all of your investment or be left holding a stock hoping the share price goes back up. As you get more refined in your trading you may narrow this up to say 2%.
Like Borg said, if you make so many trades in a weeks time (I dont know what that number is)you will be termed a "Pattern Daytrader" and will have to have $25,000 in your account
Have fun. Learn both technical analysis(charts) and fundamental analysis(quarterly reports)
Take small profits, say 2.5% to 5%. Dont expect any stock to double after you buy it. To do this efficiently your going to need to trade say at least $2000 per trade, $5000 would be better. That way the share price doesnt need to go up as much to cover your trading fee.
And lastly and most importantly...ONLY TRADE WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD TO LOSE!!!
Oddly enough I just ran into a guy that was talking about buying stock and he was saying that the KHC stock is projected to go up to $100 a share and is currently around $75. It's the Heinz/Kraft company. I haven't followed it nor researched it but there is a stock to look into if you'd like. I also like to watch Harley Davidsons stock. It's ticker is HOG.
I'm more curious as to what some of you finance guys like to look at in terms of metrics before buying. How much research and what do you look for in a company?
I don't like to buy a co that has too much debt.
I have completely different advice to an investor vs a trader/stock picker. If you want to pick stocks, you cannot have more that 5% of your risk money in any one stock. That means you have to hold at least 20 stocks. You also need to do 1 hour per week per stock of DD. That's 20 hours a week of stock research. If you do really well, better than 90% of your peers, you will beat the market.
For investors, dollar cost average into ETF's or low cost mutual funds. That's it. You will beat 90% of the stock pickers by the time you hit 60.
A guy explained it to me one time that made perfect sense. If you devote 20 hours a week to stock research vs 20 hours a week to your every day trade or job, which one will make you the most money? It's not even a contest unless you are trading huge amounts every day.
Stick to what makes you money and dollar cost average into ETF's or mutual funds.
That is unless you think you are really slick. Slicker than the sharks at the trading desk at JP Morgan.
It's actually at $770 today, with the 7 way split.
As far as day trading, I would have no idea. basically, sometimes you know a company is going to get big. Netflix was going to get bigger from 2011 until now. It was obvious Apple was gaining momentum in 2005. Don't see any slam dunks like that around at the moment right now.
A few years ago when Japan had their massive earthquake and the Fukashima nuclear reactor got flooded by the tsunami was a great opportunity to short(make money on the share price dropping) nuclear stocks. All the uranium stocks dropped 20-40% over the coming weeks as the world turned sour on nuclear power.
TASR. Taser, they make what else but tasers but they also are trying to market their new BODY CAMERAS for cops. So every time this past winter/spring when a cop shot a black thug the stock shot up 5-10%. Easy money.
Russians effing around in the bread basket of Europe(Ukraine) where a lot of wheat is produced....buy the Wheat ETF WEAT. The world was worried the supply of wheat would be disrupted so the price went up.
Ebola virus scare....buy stock in any company that is working on a cure for it...doesnt matter if they have a shot in hell of actually making a drug that works...just that they are trying. But get out quick after youve made a few bucks because everybody knows that its hype.
October forecast for a cold winter...buy natural gas stocks, perhaps coal stocks.
Think stocks when you hear the news and watching Dan Rather gets a lot more interesting.
Pit Row
I bought a coal stock at 12.00 aci and it was at a 52 week low. It's at .26 cents now. Another one I bought at 10 and it went to 18 and now it's at 13 so made a little money there but I am down about 10,000. I just have the worst luck with stocks.
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