It was a great time of trading and I was able to watch day trading grow along with participating in it as a full time trader from 1990 to current. Thus, to understand what was occurring in 1999 - 2000, you really needed to understand what was trading like in the years leading into 1999. There was an explosion in computer technology, discount brokerage firms, trading books, trader websites et cetera. One year your looking at charts you had to order by mail and the next year your sharing trading info via email, forums et cetera along with discussing your own customized charts on your new computer. (My first laptop by NEC cost 5k and I was still late in the game to jump on the technology ) Then when I had more of a look at what other traders from all over the world was doing... I was able to better connect the dots sort'uv of speak in comparison to years before the technology explosion in the trading industry. In 1999-2000, I mainly traded futures and only traded a few stocks (I stopped trading stocks after the bubble bursted). Prior to 1998 I mainly traded futures and only invested in stocks. However, its not a fair comparison to compare my own trading today with my trading back in those years because the volatility levels are much lower today (trading more riskier today) and I'm much more experienced as a trader. Simply, it was easy trading back then but I'm more profitable today. Yet, I wish I had recorded some of those crazy day trading commercials that gave everybody the impression all you needed to do was open a broker account and you'll soon be rich enough to buy an island or retire by 30 years old. Wild and crazy times that in many ways was like a big party. Mark
I had a friend at work who turned 7000 USD into 80000 USD in less than a year and last I heard, he turned the 80,000 into over 500,000. I remember walking into the book store with him when he out of the blue decided to buy every investment magazine available. There was a limited selection, so it was only the biggies, i.e. Money, Kiplinger's, Smart Money etc. He's a networking guy so he focused on networking stocks, primarily CISCO and JDSU. When did he do this first ever in his life investing? February 1999. Stocks were moving up 3 - 10 dollars a day every day for weeks on end.
Back then it was all about momentum stocks and Direct Access. A list of hot stocks and a 30 min. O.R. breakout to the Long side was all you needed. Everybody thought they were traders.......then came March 2000 :eek:
yhoo,qcom, sdli, pmcs, brcm pick one, buy the dip sell on the rise, rinse and repeat. Pretty similiar action to todays indices.
greatest call buying era had to be the mid `90`s......MSFT,INTC & DELL......all the Dellionaires out there can attest to that.....loading up on OTM & ATM calls just before their earnings run approx 3-4 weeks before the announcement & kicking them just before.....you`d be about 10 points ITM in just a few days with Dell alone.....M thru F would go +8,+4 3/4,+12 7/8, +61/2 & + 5 3/8.......just an incredible time in history.
There are other threads. Put it this way. the moves were orderly and they could be 1-2 dollar moves in a NYSE stock like emc - 5-6 times a day. If you read the book well you could figure out when you were about to have a 60--80 cent gap and get it right 90 percent of the time. Trading was pretty good if you had bullets until 2003 but there were far more traders after no one could make money on the naz. I owned a Van Buren Securites office where for a few years 12 out of fourteen traders made between 50k and 400k. With most of 100k Everyone who traded our style made money. It was that easy if you knew what you were doing.
100 point daily ranges in NQ were pretty normal. Can remember when the Nasdaq rose by over 14% during an afternoon after an unexpected FED decision.