No. And this is the part you don't get. I'm going to try once more and after that, if you still don't see where we're coming from, I'll put you back on ignore and you can go through life all the dumber. Buying and holding does work. But not always. Even when it does, it is not the method of the trader. The trader looks to make money on opportunity. And buying and holding simply locks up a trader's assets (money, margin, etc) until the move goes into the green again. I used to argue this with Skalpz/Coinz on the currency forum before his dumb ass got banned. He would buy EUR/USD when it was tanking and tell everyone "I'll be good - it's going to come back eventually." He held his EUR/USD shorts at 1.21 when the Euro went to 1.36 in December of 2004. Did it come back? Sure did. And he cashed out without a loss. Then he bragged about it to everyone. Then I reminded him that if he had just took a small loss with a stop loss around 1.22, he could have rode that up move and made money the whole time following the trend. You're the same way. You think that holding at 14,000 is ok because it'll eventually come back. What traders here know is that they can make money on the downmove by following the trend, and then if the trend changes course, follow it back up and make money that way too. You don't see that. You miss the whole opportunity cost of holding an open position in the red until it comes back. That is your problem.
Thats fine, and who says you need to live in a house, have a tv, a car, go on vacation etc etc. You could just as easily live in a tent in the woods and eat pork and beans everyday. My point is, there are degrees of success. You can make $1 every day trading and be up $250 for the year. Does that make you successful?
It's not about making a buck without busting your ass. It's about working to make ten bucks instead of settling for one.
As I said before YOU CAN play both sides of the market. The bigger issue is that it isn't very obvious in a lot of cases when it is time to switch from long/short. Factors such as slippage & spreads make it even more difficult. IF you can pull it off that pretty cool but most people can't. Also success can be misleading If you buy 1000 EWZ at 61 and it goes to 66 you've made a cool 5K which is about 8%. A contract trader, on the other hand, may double his money but the catch is he can only use a much smaller % portion of his portfolio cause if he goes all in he could blow up and loose it all. A tick trader will have to trade MANY MANY times to make 5K off 60K assuming he finds a profitable method in the first place. So what is easier? Just plunk the 60k in some etfs during a dip and let it ride. i see no need to create work for yourself. Thats just my opinion though. Nice..dow up 280 points. Back to support line of 13500. Glad I didn't sell.