Is Day Trading Possible with a full time job. ?

Discussion in 'Professional Trading' started by Pashaz, Dec 29, 2005.

  1. txuk

    txuk

    Jack, I've read prior posts in which you mention trading equities over the phone. I assumed you traded this way because it was what you were accustomed to, and because you traded in large size and received special service from the broker.
    But in this case, why do you suggest Pashaz is better off with full-service & phone as opposed to a discount broker, trading electronically? My impression is that the phone is more expensive and it takes away visibility of the transaction.
     
    #31     Dec 31, 2005
  2. telozo

    telozo

    I forgot to mention that all my orders are market. This will cause some splippage, especially when entering a short position on a rundown.
     
    #32     Dec 31, 2005
  3. vinceb

    vinceb

    I trade going to college often, I have my pocket pc on me all the time.
     
    #33     Dec 31, 2005
  4. Very good points. You have to really consider what your job allows you to do. For example, is there any chance of someone calling you into a meeting or being stuck on a long phone call? Your boss will love it if you reply, "be right there, right after I close out this trade."

    I wouldn't try to daytrade at work. You might be able to do some swing or position trading where you're holding for days or weeks but having a disciplined system is key and make sure you use protective stops. Refrain from looking at the position except for designated times. Once you get "tickeritis" at work, you're doomed.



     
    #34     Dec 31, 2005
  5. slug

    slug

    This is a very interesting thread.
    I was just having this talk with 1 of my traders on Wednesday. He had made a great deal of money in the late 90's in trading and is very busy doing side projects now. He trades almost everyday, sometimes from home when he can't make the office. There is no doubt he has a good feel for the market but due to his side projects cannot always commit or focus on the trading day. Over the last 6 months his side projects have forced him to miss many hours of the trading day and numerous days every week. I can tell you that since he went "part time" he has struggled. He is still making money, but peanuts compared to the 6 months prior. This, in my opinion, is 1 of the strongest arguments that I have seen against trading part time and expecting to remain consistently profitable. You may think that this is only 1 guy and maybe he just hit a bad streak but I could name many more traders that I have seen try to do this in the past 9+ yrs. of sitting beside traders and managing accts. only to fail miserably. I have actually never seen anyone do this successfully for any extended period of time..
    Pt to this story... Save your money, trading is tough and only getting tougher. If you can't give it 100% don't bother....
     
    #35     Dec 31, 2005
  6. Because he is at work and just starting out.

    Timing the market to make 10% on a natural cyclic move is not a big part of making money for beginners.

    The stocks that are there to play will easily give a person 10% out of the 20 to 40% swings that will show up on the lists.

    As a person gets to making a hot list from the stocks that will show up for him, he sees that 10% profit on a trade begins after the breakout and ends before the peak.

    He is just taking a chunk out of the middle of the run up as a beginning effort while he works full time. This is not a monitoring scenario.

    To learn to become rich in a short time starting from scratch only involves learning how to work with a very small portion of the market. The restrictive universe selection is the key to overcoming the most prevalent myth that it takes time to learn to make money.

    It, in fact, does not take time to learn to make money. What a person has to understand to launch right from day one of his effort is the following:

    1. Stocks can be sorted into a very small universe that has the following characteristics:

    a. Quality according to their earnings and price performance.
    b. Reliability which means the stocks do the expected without fail.
    c. Repeatability which means the stocks do b over and voer and over.

    So the thread owner has the ability to do these things from day one and it takes 5 seconds after the sorting device has been set up to the correct defaults.

    He can do daily reviews of this properly arranged universe from day one as well. "Bulking" on clearstation tells him where a stock is, what is next and how fast it is changing.

    from this there is no skill required to make up a list of "hot" stcks.

    For him, he has no idea of what a hot stock is at first. So his list is just going to make money anyway from the start. There is almost no way a stock he puts on the list is going to not make money. It is just a crude and simple no fail type of list.

    In the world of work etc, there is a thing called "tasking". "Tasking to make money is simply being prepared to make money. Most people think they have 15,000 stocks to choose from and that they need to pick the right ones from the 15,000 by doing it themselves. Read the posts here and see how most of these people screw it up over and over.

    Today, machines do the sorting. Machines tell you when a stock is getting ready to breakout. It is that simple.

    I read a lot of posts here that are written by dummies to get a view of their plight and stupidity. I think about what could possibly "fix" what is busted for them.

    Think about how hard it is to determine when a stock is going to break out. I use fifth to seventh graders to figure out how people have the capability to make money.

    When I sit for an hour with a class, I listen to thier solutions for figuring out when a stock is going to breakout. They know stocks go up and down. They can read the WSJ and/or IBD quite well. They can do the math too.

    For some reason they focus on what is going on. They perceive that a person has to know what is going on before a stock breaks out. They break the cycle up into parts.

    Peaking is the first thing they get straight. Breakouts come next.

    How to make money comes next.

    Skipping to the point, they do come to the conclusion that it all works the same over and over and then they figure out how to figure out what is next.

    when do you think they get around to figurung out how to look at the cycle in reverse time? LOL.......

    there is a kid squirming in the seat almost immediately who says "lets do it backwards".

    What is backwards from the peak? What is backwards from the break out? What is backwards from it happens over and over?

    The AHA and the religious experience for them is only one answer. Only one.

    there is no change in the answer to going backwards from the over and over thing. It just keeps. "over and overing...LOL.

    The Joseph Campbell answer prevails for the peaking. The myth of the little engine that could comes up. they do not go back from the peak facing backwards. They go down from the peak and chug back up top the peak from further and further back.

    The look back from the breakout is where they focus with greatest interest. The three most closely resembling Tony Robbins in their uniforms (I am a private school advocate since kids only go through school once) are definitely wanting to huddle and preach about it.

    Why do they do this?

    They figured out if you know what is going on before the break out, then you are there watching as the breakout occurs.

    They know that the breakout is where you begin to make money and take the little engine that could ride.

    There is no way you can keep a group of kids away from the black board as they tell you what happens before breakout.

    Do you know what happens after the kids go home and tell their parents what they "learned" today.

    For some it is like going to ET and finding nononsense type B people. for others it is like the kid and the parent have something to talk about at long last. for others it is going to be who get the IBD or WSJ first.

    ask your kid how to know when a breakout is coming up.
     
    #36     Dec 31, 2005
  7. Knowing what the condition is prior to breakout.

    Knowing this and recognizing it is the best basis for making up hot lists.

    If you work from a strong fundational knowledge of how market work, you have a great many indications of pending breakout.

    If you are a beginner someone probably will have to tell you if you do not have a rational approach to learning about the market. The originator of this thread has some minor rational views but his major premise is screwed up for two reasons, so he is handicapped severly from the get go.

    What leads to a breakout is the end of an established disagreement. This concept is related to how markets operate.

    All trades that do occur have only one point of agreement. It is an agreement upon price. The older participant (the owner) has decided that a given price is the price for him to exit. The new participant (the potential buyer) has the view that the same price is where he is willing to enter.

    Both disagree on everything else as a consequence of their independent analysis and dicision making.

    As times change the amount of potential buyers and sellers vary. For very high quality stocks in their specific universe of quality based upon earnings and price performance this amount of personages can become marginal on occasion.

    I refer to this in my writings as Dry Up meaning that there is little if any agreement on price. When little agreement on price occurs there is less and less price change.

    In making money opposites are not what is dealt with. In most other enterprises opposites are dealt with. things like competition and such occur. Think in terms of sports for how most things in the world work. Games are diversions that just give people more of the same but in a differing climate of social activity.

    Making money is more religious instead and not a case of dealing in opposites. You may think that buying and selling is how the market works and that it is based upon the oppositeness of buying and selling. This just puts you with the majority of the people.

    So how does a person get to be able to have the best orientation for making money? It is done by understanding what is going on and especially what is NOT going on.

    What wasn't that? is something that I have introduced occassionally.

    Before Breakout there is a host of "What wasn't that?" and disagreement. It needs to be converted to fifth gradeese, however, for most people.

    Of the four types of trading almost all are not being done. We still have to watch, particularly the front runners. So read a book on the four types of traders and particularly note the front runners.

    Look at the five principal formations of the market and see that all five apply to what is happening before breakout. WOW....

    We all know that the five formations are coming to their endings.

    Look at the cyclic (relatavistic indicators) and the absolute indicators. All are giving the unconventional and rarely used by the public signals that they offer. They all are DEFINITELY NOT giving any conventional signals that the public craves and lives by. What is that comming and majorly important signal all indicators are uniformly giving? They are in neutral!!!!

    So now we are capable of looking at some details. How do you look at nothing happening? Very closely is the answer.

    It is the non rolling stone problem all over again. In fact, it is the lichen story instead of the moss story. I am one of the coinventors (if it can be called that) of using five subsets of lichen to study air quality in metropolitan complexes. Almost invariably the rich people build in the lowest air quality areas. LOL....

    Kids see all the indications of what is ending before breakout occurs. For commodities trading it happens with a bang at least once every day. The inveterate stupid ones who lose their shirts most of the time actually bet on these midday breakouts instead of bracket trading them.

    Trading equities long only eliminates the betting except for BS faders.

    So the combination of little price change, Dry Up volume and indicators coming to rest in neutral positions precedes break outs. This is a time when price disagreement is reaching a peak and thus the cause of little or no trading. The illiquid market.

    The three of the five primary formations (the unmentioned ones of the MIT study of all the stocks in the markets (super dummy time)) come into play also. Two of the three are are the boundaries of the market ranging and the other is not.

    For beginners making money with quality stocks, there is only one play possible of the three formations on the table. Neat. Keeps things simple.

    All three are pennant formations. and the play is a flat top pennant (formed with right line (trendline) and a flat top) all coming to an end.

    Anyone can see who has to give in on this disagreement and as you learn and know this, you simply go to look at the next five levels of consideration. As you see this composite of levels that will be gone through on the breakout, you also begin to look for what isn't there. It is what isn't there that makes the market move. There was a recent discussion of this as introduced by a newbie a few weeks back. The discussion was so lousy I did not comment at all.

    For a person who is employed full time, he does not care about this stuff because he simply enters after the BO and leaves before the peak.

    But sooner or later a person begins to deal with money velocity of making money, then this stuff the fifth graders do comes into play.

    Lets say a full time employee wants to shorten his work career and begin his wealth building careeer sooner. Then he takes everything into account from the get go by looking at it in the evening to the extent that he can.

    I spoke of a little lady (she is petite) who over two weeks made 28,000 dollars on 40,000 capital as a contrast to a guy who just nailed 100K on unknown capital in a year. The little lady works full time I believe and only does what I suggested in the first post here.

    She is looking at what is going on and definitely has a hot list composed of stocks getting ready to breakout. She did 9 points on each of the stocks she owned in succession and one was twice the price of the other. About 4 or five day holds on each. several others in the group she is in had similar experiences with the same and with different stocks.

    Here in ET it is possible everyday of the week to read about people spinning their wheels continually on the myths of the market. It, of course, is nearly impossible to shake anyone out of these myths which abound. Why should anyone even consider being prepared and anticipating what is coming up if the person can make a guess and bet on it with good money management.

    Have any of you heard that you should only put 1% of your capital in any one effort? Acctually it is nearly impossible to not be able to find a stock that will not make you 10% in 4 or 5 days any day of the week. Why not just do that over and over?

    Why do any of the betting crap?
     
    #37     Dec 31, 2005
  8. txuk

    txuk

    the oldest of my two had her third birthday yesterday, so I'll cut her some slack for a few years. lol

    I was given my brief introduction to trading this past summer by a friend of the family that steered me towards futures, so that has been my focus since. Now we're at year-end and I can look back at the capital I had available for investing that just sat idle in bank accounts, earning almost nothing for me. The money is still there, but the time (earning potential) is lost forever. My gameplan has been to add equity trading to the mix somewhere down the road, but I'm convinced that I should ASAP allocate a portion of time daily to stocks too. Thanks.
     
    #38     Dec 31, 2005
  9. 5 months ago I couldn't understand what grob was rambling about

    Nowadays I know/have experienced every single detail he mentions about even without following his system.

    enlightning isn't it.

    :D
     
    #39     Dec 31, 2005
  10. Are you sure?... :)
     
    #40     Dec 31, 2005