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its even harder to take others emotions out of it.. you see how stocks on a dime reverse direction in a day or miss earnings and plunge so fast and so far in a heartbeat .
think about it, your not only trying to predict which stocks will go up which by itself is hard enough. but your trying to predict the time frame and world events that day as well.
most day traders i have known are only day traders until they arent... eventually things move against them enough that they realize its like las vegas and eventually you cant win this game if you play long enough.
I thought it would be fun to build your own portfolio of reasonably priced stocks with a buy and hold strategy for 10 years. Rain or shine, hold them that long and see what happens. Stocks someone can believe in. Maybe spend 3-5k on the portfolio. Let it ride.
was thinking more about stocks I could believe in. Maybe nail the next Hansens Natural or something like that. Maybe a green energy startup. Companies I believe are going to be around in 10-15 years. Some established, some new. Just to see what happens and basically gamble, but with a long term hold strategy instead. Just for kicks.
as 2008 taught us there are no stocks you can believe in..when classic companies that were as blue as blue chips can get go belly up or plunge so far so fast no one knows whats next until its to late ..
human nature is such that when things move against you even though the right thing is to bail we emotionally dont.we assume it will bounce back tomorrow...then it drops more and we say well now its down to far to sell...you end up riding it down and eventually back up ( a good thing ).
or eventually like the autos or banks the real story of the industry unfolds, you find out its not just market sentiment as you thought and you ride it down the drain hoping things improve.
also 1 bad earnings report and a stock can drop 10-20% in a day..
if anyone could have figured out this day trading thing they would be billionaires as fidelity and all the biggest brokerages would pay them for their secrets..
I got in on a TD deal a few years ago, which gave me 1,000 free trades for 3 months. It was wonderful fun. I played smart at first, and increased my money about 15% in the first month, but didn't want the tax people looking into my affairs, so I then just started taking wild speculations, and would up breaking even when my 3 months of free trades expired.
Now I just do online gold pool trading, with an outfit in Canada (Kitco) that has only a 0.4% spread on buy/sell, and the off-hours electronic fluctuations are often 1% or more, and are pretty easy to predict, so I'm doing well on that and it is untraceable. One or two days a week, I can make 1% overnight, with the only risk being an outright crash. I don't have a lot to invest, but I'm nickel-and-diming them to death, just for fun. With the banks paying 0.75 on CDs, I can make more than that in one night on gold.
Last edited by jtur88; 07-31-2010 at 09:47 AM..
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