And what would that objective be? Gamble and hope you become a millionaire overnight in the stockmarket? Whether you have $2,000 or $2,000,000, the fact is you are trying to preserve your capital. If you gamble and lose that $2,000 or $2,000,000 you are done! You have blown your account! Doesn't matter if you place just one trade and risk that $2,000 which is your choice or put up multiple trades but, you will be out of your monies and still wondering why! If you are just gambling, you might be better off risking your monies in Las Vegas because you can luck out and win something! On the other hand, gambling in the stockmarket without risk management, is like jumping out of the plane without a parachute! Good luck with that!
I am going to disagree with you because there are probably, multiple ways to make monies in the stockmarket. Position trading makes sense for investors like yourself. That said, day traders have made lots of monies in the stockmarket and compounded their returns in a short period of time. Timothy Sykes is one of them. I tried day trading myself but, was bad at it. Now, swing trade is an entirely, different animal. I am a swing trader now, holding positions in weeks to months. Trading in a short term basis makes sense from the fact that you compound the return on your monies multiple times in a shorter time frame. There is a guy in the journal section who ran up $2,000 into $98,000 within 6 months? He is trading stock options like me which allows you to generate huge returns with less capital. Of course, you have losses like everyone else. Each person has a different risk tolerance and so, not saying one way is better than the other. There are obviously, trade offs. Still, short term trading should be looked at if you are looking for higher returns in a shorter period of time!
It all depends on whether you are investing or day trading. You could have bought 100 shares of TNDM at $4 cost $400 plus commissions (you need a broker at $2 per trade) that would be worth $1600 today. If you had bought 1000 shares then 16000 today obviously. Is all a numbers game. Of you are day trading then you try to make $200 on a trade, that is 20 cents on a 1000 shares. And do that 5 times in a day, not always possible. You may be able to do it on a $2 stock so will cost you $2000 , you could try starting out with 500 share trades and make $100. Still a numbers game. Options you may be able to set up a margin account for $1000 then day trade certain weekly options. Something slightly out of the money can cost 10 cents a contract and could go to 50 cents within the day , so 5 contacts $50 (plus commissions $2 a contract for $10) could go to $250 in the day much more leverage. The big question is what to buy and what to trade. Find some volatile stocks and paper trade them for a while and the same with options if that's what you want to do. The secret is when to do the trade long or short
Unfortunately, it does not work this way - average returns are very misleading when you are looking at a path dependent result. There is a reason why actuarial analysis usually uses some form of resampling to understand the statistical expectation
People who really made money in the markets are the ones who invested and kept adding , never sold. If you are in your twenties , don't waste your money and time on trading. Combination of good dividend and growth , that's all you need. For trading I wouldn't invest more than 10K , that's when you have 40 k invested for long term.
%% Starting; small as you can. But do get a good private library or several library cards A student?? S tart even smaller, I mostly learned part time; also wisdom is profitable to direct
Nicely done... I know the power of options first hand...both selling premium and buying it. Ya gotta have a knack for ecquisite timing...
Smallfil, bit of a stupid newbie question but is there a shortcut way to calculating this on the fly without getting a calculator out (I actually have an Excel calculator which works fairly well). Alternatively, it would great if there was a custom hot key I could set up in Lightspeed which could allow me to place trades and set a STOP based on a 2% risk profile. Calling @Robert Morse from Lightspeed . I guess the closest one can get to this is setting a 10c or 20c STOP, right?
With LS Trader, you can set stops with a dollar value not a percentage. With the newest version, we have added new reference points. We now offer to set the stops through the: bid ask primary bid primary ask primary last prev close position price (Average for today) position cost basis (Average since you started the position) Bob