On paper profits and virtual losses...

If I buy a stock at 1$, it goes to 10$, falls back to 5$ and I sell...

Did I make a profit or did I lose 50%?

I can't get my head around this question.

 

$5-$1 = $4 profit...


Is it just me, or did we learn this in kindergarten?

 

Yeah, but your account said 10$....

It was yours.

All you had to do is push the sell buton.

 

I'm guessing you'd argue with whoever decided to respond to this waste of bandwidth.

 

An optimist would focus on the realized profit.
A pessimist would focus on the drawdown from the peak price.

 

You are not familiar with the concept of realized and unrealized gains/losses?

The other poster is right - what a waste of bandwidth...

 

Definitely stick with paper trading if this is something you had to think about for more than 3 seconds.

 

Debaser is no different than all those economists on CNBC that always talk about "Well if you bought silver in 1980, you are still down over 50%" Or the ones that say "Wow, look how great the economy is doing...the dow is up 4,500 points in 19 months! Thats almost double!"

Last year I made a 187% return. I dont focus on the fact that I was up over 400% by june of that year and threw over half of it away on risky trades in the 2nd half of the year.

Well...maybe I do a little bit.

 

You also don't focus on the 300% loss the year before, right?

 

It's a much more complicated question than the pinheads who infest this board will be able to tackle.



I won't waste my time on it, but I'd seek an answer where the average IQ was > 75