Ok so here goes. I have a ~$2k acct with IB. I have a day job so I try to swing trade. My wedding is fast approaching and it seems like I am forever paying for wedding crap (what the hell is tulle anyway?) and there is no money left over for "toys". I could cash out my IB account and buy myself an HDTV, but then no trading. My goal is to slowly grow my account until I get it up to around $4k, then withdraw $2k and get a sweet ass HDTV So I started in mid February. Traded SMH for a profit, NEM for a loss, SONS recently for a big gain, and now have a position in HMY at an average cost of $12. Because I am slowly gaining confidence, I have kept the size extremely small (to the point where I am not afraid of losing, in fact the trade seems so small that its not even worth it!). Currently am long with 20% of my funds, the most I have put to work yet. I am up a whopping 1.63% in two months, at this rate it will take 10 years to reach my goal lol. Actually its more like a 8% return on the equity I had invested so thats not bad. To do this in a year I need 6% a month compounded on the total account, so its time to step it up a notch. I am going to treat this like a real trading account and minimize the risk of blowout via money management. So lets begin: Acct Value: $2241 Stock: $476 Cash: $1765 Currently long 40 shares of HMY. Starting buying a week ago when it looked like it had bottomed and a possible trend change could happen. Stop is at 11.08. Gold up as well as stock market today? Weird. Something has to give. Might open short position on DIA if gets up too high (>8500) in the next few days. Also watching CLS to see if it turns around, and thinking about a swing long in CPWR.
Generally the market is quite accommodating about rewarding those who use her as a conduit for purchasing material possessions.
If you read any books about trading you would know that once you decide to use market to buy some things prepare to lose.
I held my SMH trade for about 3 weeks... now everyday I get a semiconductor annual report in the mail from IB? How can I stop this....I don't want to waste IBs money on something I am not going to read.
this is what to do, go to circuit city or best buy, etc. open up a line of credit with no interest and no payments for 6 months or a year if you can get it. buy your TV and trade with your cash, use your profits to pay back the line of credit before interest hits. enjoy, surfer