I am a day trader (US stocks, BTC, forex). Anyone else trade, invest, or considering it?
Trading/Investing Thread
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hunts
United States0 Posts
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BerserkSword
United States0 Posts
On May 12 2019 13:54 hunts wrote: I've been trying to learn how to trade. I've read up on investing and such, it seems for trading though you want more trend analysis than fundamentals. Also right now I don't have much money to work with, so I don't meet the $20,000 minimum to be able to day trade, making me limited to 3 day trades per 5 days. Hopefully there are other people on here that are also interested and will make this thread alive. Trend analysis, and technical analysis in general, is definitely far more important than fundamentals for trading. There is an old saying in trading - "Show me the chart and I will tell you the news." The technicals are pretty much everything in trading. In fact, news events (fundamentals) are often used as catalysts to help engineer liquidity with the retail (average joe) Fortunately you dont have to involve yourself with the stock market and pattern day trading rules if you want to practice. The two best options for you, imo, are 1) Bitcoin 2) Foreign exchange (trading national currencies) Both allow you to trade with as little as you want, as much as you want. The Bitcoin market is 24/7 and the forex is 24/5, meaning u can practice outside of normal working hours. I chose those two for a reason. Bitcoin is extraordinary is that it's pretty much purely technical, meaning you can really hone your TA skills with it. It also moves MUCH faster than other markets, meaning you get to experience a wide range of market cycles within a shorter period of time, an extremely valuable exerpience. For example, 2018 in Bitcoin wouldve given you a master class on a bear market, something that is probably once in a generation for legacy markets. Forex is like bitcoin without the massive trends and is of course more tied to fundamentals. But it's very TA friendly except for the volume based TA and it really highlights the concept of liquidity hunting which is vital concept to understand in trading. | |||
hunts
United States0 Posts
Also I've heard that saying before too. Same with "Bulls make money, bears make money, hogs get slaughtered" which I kind of liked. | |||
BerserkSword
United States0 Posts
On May 12 2019 14:31 hunts wrote: I have put some thought into trying to open bitcoin accounts with 2 different brokers so that I could hedge, although I'm not sure if that's allowed. It seems volatile enough that that would probably do well, but I haven't really researched it enough. Also I thought of doing forex before, but someone else that traded/invested told me not to without a lot of money because the movements there are much smaller than with stocks and so require more money to really make money. Also I've heard that saying before too. Same with "Bulls make money, bears make money, hogs get slaughtered" which I kind of liked. Your hedging idea is allowed. in fact you can hedge on the same exchange/broker depending on which one you use lol (thanks to futures contracts) Whoever told you that about forex is missing a very huge concept in all of this - the factor of leverage Nobody (retail) trades on forex without leverage. I usually trade the forex markets using 50:1 so even though the moves are small, you can make good money thanks to leverage (you should learn in depth what leverage is so you know the pros and cons of it). In fact it's easier for people like you and me to make crazy money via regular trading on forex vs the stock market....the difference is that stock markets have options which is a whole nother ball game. And if your goal at the moment is to just practice, gross profits shouldnt matter that much either. that saying you posted is another famous one lol | |||
FiWiFaKi
Canada5 Posts
So I'd rather pay a smaller percentage to have my money managed, on the order of 0.05-0.2%, versus some equity funds where I'd pay closer to 2%. It's a fairly safe investment for an average expected return of around 10%. I'm young, so monthly fluctuations aren't a bother to me (even a 3 year recession wouldn't bother me that much) as I don't need the money for anything. Right now, I'm better off working to add to my money, versus trying to spend a lot of time optimizating everything, so I'm trying to have a fairly maintance free investment option. Hopefully 5 years down the road the balance will change, but for now still working on increasing that initial capital. Really, all I'm trying to do is time the next crash, and sell before (get some 3% guaranteed while I wait for the crash) and rebuy during it. I think the future is looking good, my likely queue to sell will be the second I sniff a probably democrat victory in the 2020 elections, or some new government developments in Asia. My long term play is to retire at 40-45 with enough money to live an upper middle class life, so I'm trying to balance the risk and return accordingly. Anyway, thanks for making this thread, I hope I learn some things here  Sorry I can't contribute much in the knowledge department, but just thought I'd give a little introduction. | |||
hunts
United States0 Posts
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Sermokala
United States1508 Posts
r/wallstreetbets makes me smile though. The story of box trades and robinhood always brings a smile to my face. | |||
CorsairHero
Canada0 Posts
Index/bonds is better for pretty much 99.9% of people. Trading costs will add up and eat into your total return. Buffett who is a student of Graham has underperformed the sp500 during the longest bull run in history. | |||
CorsairHero
Canada0 Posts
On May 12 2019 17:22 FiWiFaKi wrote: Really, all I'm trying to do is time the next crash, With what metrics? What is your entry point? Active funds do exactly what you're trying to do and the virtually all lose to the index. Market timing is a money loser imo unless you use a trading algorithm that takes the emotional part out and you stick with it. Lump sum (investing today) beats averaging in. | |||
KelianQatar
0 Posts
I do like to use options to beef up my stock portfolio though, Anyone else trading options? Or using them to get a discount on stocks? On May 13 2019 03:18 Sermokala wrote: I try my hand at fake money trading every now and then to see if I'd make real money on it. I never really make enough to justify the risk and when I Start investing riskier I always end up losing everything. r/wallstreetbets makes me smile though. The story of box trades and robinhood always brings a smile to my face. What platform do you use? Or are you strictly using paper trades? I use TDAmeritrades Thinkorswim. I love their real time paper trading platform. I like to use it to test new strategies/trades, really lets me see how it plays out in real time. | |||
FiWiFaKi
Canada5 Posts
On May 13 2019 03:35 CorsairHero wrote: With what metrics? What is your entry point? Active funds do exactly what you're trying to do and the virtually all lose to the index. Market timing is a money loser imo unless you use a trading algorithm that takes the emotional part out and you stick with it. Lump sum (investing today) beats averaging in. I guess it might be irrational thinking on my part. When oil drops to $40 a barrel, I know it's going to be up to 80 at the some in the next 5 years, when real estate here drops, it always goes back up after. When the market crashes, its not like we're going to become primitive apes, all the fundamentals and technology is there, so when there's a 20% drop in the market, we're not heading towards WW3, it just becomes a perfect time to buy. Short term trends aren't too predictable, but I think these long term decisions can be understood with certain thinking. I'm a bit of a virgin investor, not having done much, don't know the business lingo particularly well, and going more with my understanding of the human race and logic instead. From what I've talked to people at wealth management groups, I don't respect the intelligence they possess, it's all about who can put a nicer wrapper on a piece of shit, and justify it by taking higher commission. I try to avoid all investing literature because it gets your mind into a certain framework, using terms like bullish, and a long position... It gets you to think like everyone else, and takes away from what is important imo. I might be naive and thinking I know everything, but I think about things in a lot of depth, and it might be conformation bias... But so many of the stocks I look at, I get the future trend down so well. Whether it was reading about developments of Ryzen and seeing it as their big break, or seeing how much room Amazon still had to grow in 2016. Or it was simply coincidence, and I don't know anything. It gives me some semblance of power and control in my investing decisions without having to do any sort of management, just making a decision or two once a year, I like that. Either way, if I don't know anything, I'm probably shooting at stars as much as the fund managers, and my losses won't be too significant. When we're at the peak in stock market history, there's only so much growth that can be had, there hasn't been an output increase in the last 20 years that would warrant such an overvaluation imo, and the US is close to due for a recession if you start going for more welfare state policies. Actually I view it the other way, you should not use metrics, or more accurately, don't make decisions on any calculations a computer can do... Since everyone else does that and going with the market trend is incorrect more often than right. I mean yes, look at their balance sheet, use that as a rough base, but look at the behavior of people, changes in values of new generations, what impacts the purchasing decisions of your closest friends, a very good understanding of what is possible with current technology. Idk, for me when I think about investing, it's requires all my life experiences, definitely not a finance degree (or an economics degree in my case). Anyway, I got lucky with mining bitcoin and made more money than I knew what to do with as a kid, and I like to give myself some credit that I saw the trend coming. Now I'm trying to play it a little bit safer. | |||
KelianQatar
0 Posts
On May 13 2019 04:53 FiWiFaKi wrote: I guess it might be irrational thinking on my part. When oil drops to $40 a barrel, I know it's going to be up to 80 at the some in the next 5 years, when real estate here drops, it always goes back up after. When the market crashes, its not like we're going to become primitive apes, all the fundamentals and technology is there, so when there's a 20% drop in the market, we're not heading towards WW3, it just becomes a perfect time to buy. Short term trends aren't too predictable, but I think these long term decisions can be understood with certain thinking. I'm a bit of a virgin investor, not having done much, don't know the business lingo particularly well, and going more with my understanding of the human race and logic instead. From what I've talked to people at wealth management groups, I don't respect the intelligence they possess, it's all about who can put a nicer wrapper on a piece of shit, and justify it by taking higher commission. I try to avoid all investing literature because it gets your mind into a certain framework, using terms like bullish, and a long position... It gets you to think like everyone else, and takes away from what is important imo. I might be naive and thinking I know everything, but I think about things in a lot of depth, and it might be conformation bias... But so many of the stocks I look at, I get the future trend down so well. Whether it was reading about developments of Ryzen and seeing it as their big break, or seeing how much room Amazon still had to grow in 2016. Or it was simply coincidence, and I don't know anything. It gives me some semblance of power and control in my investing decisions without having to do any sort of management, just making a decision or two once a year, I like that. Either way, if I don't know anything, I'm probably shooting at stars as much as the fund managers, and my losses won't be too significant. When we're at the peak in stock market history, there's only so much growth that can be had, there hasn't been an output increase in the last 20 years that would warrant such an overvaluation imo, and the US is close to due for a recession if you start going for more welfare state policies. I know what you mean, trading news is really risky. It can be so easily manipulated. I read a story of how the market dropped on a day when Greenspan left his office with a full briefcase! Apparently someone saw it and thought it was a bad market indicator. News spread, the market dropped dramatically. And it turned out Greenspan was just switching out briefcases. And of course with Elon Musk's tweeting abilities equal to that of our esteemed President Trump, TSLA's chart looks like a new extreme sport roller coaster! I try to just trade technicals and avoid news. I do make sure I'm not trading into an earnings announcement, that is about all I worry about. I've had pretty good luck with a regular 10% gain. | |||
FiWiFaKi
Canada5 Posts
Kudos to the people that can read those news, figure out the psychology of all the potential investors, flip it on its head, and make consistent returns. Too much like poker for my tastes, mind gaming someone in starcraft is fun, trying to do it as a career is not for me. | |||
hunts
United States0 Posts
On May 13 2019 05:15 FiWiFaKi wrote: Exactly how I feel haha. Pretty nice returns! My dad did a lot of trading into many penny stock natural resource companies, usually gold mines or oil fields. He had a good streak where one company made him 10x return in under 2 years, another 4x in a similar time frame, and then lost around a quarter million in one, Western Zagros I think. Kind of got him to stop after that experience. Feels too much like staking on Runescape, or just gambling and remembering your wins more than your losses. Kudos to the people that can read those news, figure out the psychology of all the potential investors, flip it on its head, and make consistent returns. Too much like poker for my tastes, mind gaming someone in starcraft is fun, trying to do it as a career is not for me. Yeah I feel the same kind of. I tried playing some guessing games, such as buying into ATVI just before blizzcon predicting it would go up short term and instead having it drop quite a bit and taking almost a month to make a profit. Also last july when FB plummeted after a bad conference call I called that it would've been a good time to buy into them, they ended up going down some more, but almost a year later and I was right, if the person buying was able to hold it long enough. | |||
Sermokala
United States1508 Posts
On May 13 2019 04:52 KelianQatar wrote: Hey there! I also do some day trading. I work with options, mostly credit spreads, premium harvesting, naked puts. I've started trading in futures e-minis. My strat uses volatility to time entry and candle stick charting indicators. I do like to use options to beef up my stock portfolio though, Anyone else trading options? Or using them to get a discount on stocks? What platform do you use? Or are you strictly using paper trades? I use TDAmeritrades Thinkorswim. I love their real time paper trading platform. I like to use it to test new strategies/trades, really lets me see how it plays out in real time. I didn't use a platform the times I did it I just used spreadsheets and extrapolated graphs and whatnot. I never really got the gimmick of real time tradeing. It just seems like a lot more noise in a field that already is drowning in bad info. Give me my day high/low 7 day 30 day and EPS But man I've got some jones to short me some uber when it goes live. | |||
CorsairHero
Canada0 Posts
On May 13 2019 04:53 FiWiFaKi wrote: I guess it might be irrational thinking on my part. When oil drops to $40 a barrel, I know it's going to be up to 80 at the some in the next 5 years, when real estate here drops, it always goes back up after. When the market crashes, its not like we're going to become primitive apes, all the fundamentals and technology is there, so when there's a 20% drop in the market, we're not heading towards WW3, it just becomes a perfect time to buy. Oil doesn't pay a dividend though. When you look at total return, compounding is king with dividend reinvestment. Capital gain is only part of the return. | |||
Laserist
Turkey0 Posts
I am basically sitting on my very small pile of cash and waiting for another 20-30% drop before buying anything. It is fascinating to see US markets having one of the longest winning streak while the rest of the world burned to ashes. I wonder if anyone has a prediction on when US market may join the crowd. | |||
hunts
United States0 Posts
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