Trading doesn't have to be hard.

I’ve looked at this forum over the years but have never bothered posting before. But after reading nonsense on a thread about 90% of traders being losers decided I would post. To the original poster of that thread- if you listen to any of these people you will be one of the 90% losers. Trading is EASY, these people work their butts off to make it as hard as possible. Spending hours looking at spreadsheets and charts to see if a fast thingamadickie has crossed a slow watchyamacallit, or if the stock has hit a point it retraced to 8 years ago and other nonsense. Here is how you can be successful trading:

1. Understand trading is gambling. If you don’t want to risk your money don’t trade.
2. Only gamble your money when there is a HIGH probability of success and return.
3. High probability opportunities are few and far between, limit yourself to no more than
a few trades per year.

Here is what I have traded over my 6 year career:

Took $50,000 from my IRA and it put into a trading account. Watched the market start to come off it’s bottom in 2003 waiting for a HIGH PROBABILITY TRADE.

1st trade- Day after Memorial weekend I’m watching the screen and the QQQ’s go from red to green(.20 to .25 to .30 on the bid on SP 29 calls) within minutes and start to run up. No I don’t know if the Q’s have a flaming doji or an inverted hammer coming out of their arse on the stock charts or not, but I know that if the price is going up that fast there is a HIGH PROBABILITY I can make money buying. I buy 1000 of the near month 29 strike price calls for .30 and immediately pull up an order to sell 10,000 Q’s at market if the trade suddenly turns and I want to make money on the drop. Well the Q’s run all that week and Mon-Thurs of the next week and I cash out with the calls at $275 and over $250,000 profit.

2nd trade- Unlike most traders, I’m in no rush to give my money back so I look and wait awhile before risking any of that $250,000. Looking through the WSJ one day I notice that 2 new companies have been added to the Nasdaq, one of them is Taser. I figure being added to the listing is going to raise the price of the stock so I take a look at it, like what I see, and risk about 15% of my now $300,000+ war chest and buy 1500 shares of the stock at the open in the low $30’s since it doesn’t have options yet. Taser runs up to $127 before falling down and I get out at $108. I clear over $100,000.

3rd trade-Some people are winners, some are losers. I think people like Steve Jobs and Martha Stewart are winners. I thought that when she was dealing with the Feds before going into the pokey and the stock was down to $8, that she would be a winner again. I put my money where my mouth was and bought 1000 of the $10 strike price LEAPS for the next year at $50 each. I sold them with MSO in the high $20’s and I made $2725/ contract, 1000 contracts. Do the math on that .The stock went up further to the mid 30’s in Feb before turning, but I’m not a pig and was happy with what I made.

So, my point is that you can slave like a fool looking for the holy grail of charts and systems that will allow you to sit glued to your screen day in and day out hoping to grab a few points here and there, or you can learn to read the market and use your head to reach in and take out in enough quantity to make it worth your while. It mainly just requires patience and intelligent thought. Don’t let these “pros” discourage you.