what if you sold this market a year ago?

Originally posted by andrasnm
It seems many people are refusing to change and keep doing what does not seem to work for most.
I apologize if you are very successful scalper and short term trader. We all know that most people who trade short term are not.
I firmly belive that intermediate and long term traders, on average fare better. This is what I have switched into a while back(2 years ago). I worry about how I make my weekly/monthly income and I don't attempt to eek that out from trading. I trade exclusively longer term trends.
(Stock index and commodities, oil, gold and currencies are my main focus)

My holding is 3-6 months and I reenter the same position or sometimes I double my position if I scored well in the first 3 months.
I also suspect most short term traders are attracted to the action and the myth of a trader(Gordon Gekko like characters from our stereo-typical wall streeter)
I have met a group of traders who are very low profile and low tech. Trade mainly ETF and funds like Fidelity. (The fidelity switchers made enough during the Bull market to offset the sales charge fidelity charges for the clients)
The best thing is diversification (using index funds) and no commission plus no quote overhead!
That can be $500 a month savings which does not include your commission saving.
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Okay, this makes more sense.

But honestly, I have no idea how anyone can know what will happen six minutes from now, let alone a year.

nitro
 
Traders are getting paid to be right long term! More right they are better they getting paid. If you are only right for 2 minutes
and your 'betting average' is so so , how can you expect to make a lot?
 
SP500 is down about 30% from last year. A good day trader can make a few hundred percent a year. Buy and hold or short and hold won't make you much in the long run.
 
Originally posted by silk
SP500 is down about 30% from last year. A good day trader can make a few hundred percent a year. Buy and hold or short and hold won't make you much in the long run.
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Well, that's yes and no. It seems like in daytrading you can make more, but there's a "capacity issue". So, the SP500 is down 30% last year. And if a really good daytrader make .5-1% a day he can easily make well over 300% a year.

But the reality it's difficult to be that consistent every SINGLE day.

And you can't really move size. It's not like you can short $100M every day and cover it like that. Whereas, if you are a position trader or fund manager and you wanted to short, you can easily short a few billion over last year and 30% of a few billions is a lot of pretty pennies...

just giving a sense of perspective...

:)

-99
 
Someone posted a link to an article here once before ( i will try searching for it later) , indicating your point. The article went on to say that more success is found in the intermidiate time frame, as you pointed out( days, weeks, months), than in the short term time frame( seconds, minutes, intraday).
 
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