There is another reason why I like ETFs/Futures and wish I had traded them more over the past few years. Having a skill set there is more valuable than just about anything else! For instance, over the past few years I have gotten pretty good at trading OTC stocks (OTCBB and pinksheets) but that market (due changes in SEC policies) has pretty much died, maybe it comes back one day but I doubt it will be as good as it was. The value of the skillset I accumulated has evaporated (I still make some money there but its like 10% of what I used to).
Small caps nasdaq stocks are smilar too (although if the bio bubble bursts this skill set is likely to be worth considerably less), you can make some and there is some value there but being a good ETF or futures trader you have a skillset that you can scale into infinity. If you get extremely good, you might even be able to open a fund and then trade hundreds of millions of dollars, all with similar patterns/setups you have learned. Accumulating experience (like missing gains from shorting gold into a red roll of a 'dovish' fed minute) is likely to pay off much more over the long-term than other types of trading. Lesson learned.
Small caps nasdaq stocks are smilar too (although if the bio bubble bursts this skill set is likely to be worth considerably less), you can make some and there is some value there but being a good ETF or futures trader you have a skillset that you can scale into infinity. If you get extremely good, you might even be able to open a fund and then trade hundreds of millions of dollars, all with similar patterns/setups you have learned. Accumulating experience (like missing gains from shorting gold into a red roll of a 'dovish' fed minute) is likely to pay off much more over the long-term than other types of trading. Lesson learned.
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