after the last week's trading "action", would anyone care to comment on how right I was, am and remain?......best of luck to all but all the gold in these mountains have been mined. grimer11
Yo Grimer, why don't you just sit tight, and take a break for a couple of weeks. Then you can just wait for the market to lose 10-12% off of the top and you'll know that we have broken the uptrend. Then you wait for 60% retracement, and short the world. Everybody will be so busy trying to buy into the selling, and getting destroyed, and you'll be making so much cash that you'll be able to piss on the bulls' shoes. Then you can take some of that money to Vegas and have fun with it. Gambling, strip clubs, hookers. Do it up big time in Vegas, baby!!! woohoo!!!!
Grimer, most people that reply here are not day traders but swing traders and really have no idea what you are talking about. Grimer is talking about making a living short term day trading STOCKS between the hours of 9:30 and 4:00. So unless this is what you are doing, I wouldn't bad mouth Grimer. The good news is that volatility can not get lower from here. LOL. Also, i'm hopeful that the new NYSE rules allowing larger NX sizes will bring back the large order sizes to the nyse mid caps. The problem for day trading NYSE as i see it, is that because volatility is 50% of where it needs to be for anyone but the "MASTER" trader to make money, "day trader open interest" has dropped to near zero. Even specialists don't trade much. You need day trader open interest to create puke outs (in size 5-10k shares) at the inflection points which allows the savvy daytrader to get a "free money" entry or exit. I'm hoping that the new rules will entice more day traders (even if its the computerized systems, these trades have to be unwound later in day creating more order flow) to take positions. I'm hoping this will bring back the 5k and 10k order sizes. You need more orderflow in a 2 minute period than the stock can handle creating price abberations. You also need the order flow in a context of volatility so no one wants to take the other side of the trade accept for the savvy day trader who knows a good price when he sees one. The number of favorable entries in stocks has declined from the 10,000's a day, to mabye 50-100 per day. On a borring friday afternoon in 2002 i could easily tally up 10k in profits. Now all too often I spend Sunday morning reminiscing about how it used to be good, how it needs to get better, and crying over my friday afternoon losses. All one has to do is pull up a 10 minute chart of a typical high beta midcap stock from 2001 or 2002 and compare it to a chart from this week to get what i'm saying. You will see a 30 cent range compared to a 12 cent range. The good news is that i'm making some green, others are making some green, and things will probably only get better! You just have to keep your head up and make sure you can stay in the game for the long term.
Alot of the comments made were right on, whether you are a swing trader or day trader. You need to be constantly adapting to new market enviroments and the second your attitude turns negative your toast. Speaking of last week for day-trading, its expected and common when earnings season dies down the market turns to crap, even in 2002, after jan earnings it was very hard to make money.
I agree, for the pure intra-day day trader, it's much harder than past years. Some still have niches that are profitable, but the pie is smaller for everyone. But I have to ask, if you are a trader and your game is dying, why continue to beat your head against the wall and just hope it gets better? A trader TRADES. He trades whatever and where ever he can make the most money. Why say "oh those commodity traders don't understand how hard us stock guys have it"? Why not just join them if that's where the easiest money is being made? Did you people sign a lifelong contract saying you can only scalp listed stocks for quarters? I dunno, to me if trading is in your blood and that's all you want to do, there shouldn't be any hesitation to strike out and try new ideas and new markets. The game is basically the same everywhere.
Sure, some yahoos will claim they make money consistently as a "daytrader", I call bullshit on that one. Day Trading, scalping pennies is over and has been for a little while now. It will just take a little longer for that to sink into the heads. Momentum has changed to longer term, a day, or 5. Out of all the sucessful daytraders I traded with, ZERO, thats right ZERO are still "day trading". A few moved over to the futures end to try and intraday traded, but on a % bases are not consistent in profits.\ And of course, the 20,000 scrub members of this site will come on and post how well they are doing daytrading, will name a few stocks that may have moved a few points, that they had perfect timing in and milked it for all its worth. However, the truth is out there, those that are in this profession know that daytrading as defined is finished. Of course they will try and re-invent daytrading to sell the dream.LOL but if you missed it 99-2000, its gone forever. Now trading has become less attrative and a lot harder, not to say you cant make money but the % of people who are is as low as the VIX its self.
You are absolutely wrong and misinformed. I know of many DAY traders making plenty of money in this market just going in and out. There is money to be made in any time frame (1 minute to infinity) and in any market(stocks, forex, futures, etc). It is up to the individual to find out how.
the money I have made over the last 3 months or so has been swing trading, and it has worked quite well......I do lament the ever plummeting volatility which is now being accompanied by anemic, shit volume in anything other than DIS or whatever the "play of the day" happens to be (lately the day ranges in these special situations has been pathetic as well)......I run a small desk in NY and am having difficulty explaining to the newbies how they should be focused, as most prop firms still discourage the newer traders from carrying overnights (this is quite understandable)......the difficulty lies in the fact that most young traders look for breakouts and this market at the moment does not afford that.....I've tried to explain that a way to sell volatility in times like this is to sell strength and lightly buy weakness (the exact opposite of my trading philosophy), but they still look for the breakouts, or take tiny loss after tiny loss even though their stocks aren't going anywhere.......in short, its tough to be a newbie, and tough to be the one eyed man in the valley of the blind...........best of luck to all and thanks for the contributions. grimer11