Wow, I just got back from the bars/clubs, and my entire email was filled up with replys. Why don't you guys leave the market at the office and enjoy the weekend. I also think about the market almost 24/7, but I know when to give it a break so I can enjoy myself. Trust me, some R&R will make you a much more focused trader when monday comes around. Anyway, I figured I'd chime in (even considering my inebriated state). I'm not sure how coherent this will be just b/c there are so many things to respond to. I will just go through and respond I guess. ---------------------------------------------------- Firstly, tradermike, I am surprised that you have held up as well under these attacks, and that you continue to post in a positive manner. As for your comment towards me regarding Gary B. Smith. Go back and read the article, he thought OPTN had already moved too far in % terms. I hope the trade works out for you. You claim to have been very profitable. Congrats. I just think that the shorter your timeframe is, the more risk control you have. I know that on any position I trade, my slippage if I decide to bail is only 1/4 point if I sell all at market. That is the main determining factor in my position size. Last week, I took positions of over 50k shares on 2 occasions. I knew I could get out down a dime at any point during the trade. That's the advantage of short term trading. I don't have to worry about the news. In your case, you have to be concerned about something comming out that halves your stock. I also believe that a lot of short trades will give you better profits b/c of compounding. I would rather take 5000 high probability trades over the course of the year, than stake my yearly p/l on 3 dozen trades. The odds of a stock doubling or trippling in 6-12 months are slim (people just deceived themselves during the tech mania). I would rather just make those quick 1% gains and move on. But every trader has his methods, and since you are profitable, I don't blame you for sticking to what works for you, and I'll stick to what works for me. As for soros, I take back my earlier comments. He did daytrade. He was much bigger though. He would bully the sp futs after every fed meeting. He would decide which way the market would go before the meeting, if it was up, he'd buy equities for a few days before the meeting, then right after the announcement, he'd buy, and keep on buying til the sellers gave in, and the shorts covered. I've heard stories from sp guys that a decade ago, after a fed meeting, they wouldn't react til they saw those muli-thousand contract orders comming in, cause they knew that soros would move the market and they wanted to be on his side. He also traded currencies. You can move billions with very little slippage in most of the major currencies. Buffett never was a short term trader, but he also only has averaged about 30% annual range I believe. Most successful traders make a few hundred percent yearly. Granted, in dollar terms, he makes more than any traders, but then again no one has set me up with a multi-billion dollar trust to trade [yet]. I'd be very happy to make a few hundred k's a year, and I think most people on this board would be very pleased with that as well. -------------------------------------------------- Sniper wrote: In the book "The Stock Trader" by Tony Oz he makes 56% return in one month trading short-term something like 100 trades or so. Now if you compound this return over 6 months, you will get 1440% return. Almost TEN times better than your returns with limited overnight risk. If I had a choice of one of the two, I'd rather have his daytrading returns over investing returns anytime " Those are actually my returns and not his. You errased your origional comment, so I won't ellaborate too much, but Tony Oz is a god, I'm mortal. I would just hope that I am half as good ten years from now when I have a decade of experience. --------------------------------------------------- Tradermike wrote: "I disagree about the time frame comment. The shorter your timeframe is, the better your odds of success are.. ..There are too many opportunities for news to affect the market. I definately think that the shorter your timeframe, the better your odds are." This is completely false and to hold this belief is to deny reality. For whatever reason you are trying to deny the difficulty of daytrading. You either want lurkers to think daytrading is easy or else you are trying to tell yourself that it is easier than it really is. I admit that daytrading is probably the most difficult profession around. But if you want to put in the time and effort, it is most likely the most financially rewarding one around. I have no real motives, but you are flatly wrong for thinking that most traders have stopped trading, or are adapting to something of a much longer timeframe. I never traded cmgi. I could care less what it is doing. For half of last year, I traded mainly MO. I have since switched to DIS. But I still trade for those same quarters I always have. A decade from now, DIS will still be the same stock. I also know dozens of other traders who are just as profitable, or more profitable now than during the internet bubble. The good traders were never taking 40 point scalps in china.com. They were taking their half point gains in GE,UTX and AA. There is no way you can control your risk on monster swings like those tech stocks had. I wish I could have caught just one of those monster moves, but I could never bring myself to use a 5 point stop, and pay a half point spread. ------------------------------------------------------ Spud wrote: SPUD- I find your comments to be the most inflamitory on this whole thread. I don't know how I got the designation of "senior member" (I never asked for it. It just magically appeared somehow), but since you singled us out, I would like to speak for all "senior traders" on this board. I am friendly with quite a few of them, and their main motives are to provide a place that we can all talk strategy. To the best of my knowlege, none are trying to hype a service, or take money from the inexperienced. When I was first strugling, I found this site to be far superior to yahoo and SI. That's why I remained and gave up on the others. When I finally achieved a certain level of success, I felt that it was time to give something back to the least experienced because of the help I was given by members (many of whom are still actively posting here). I think that the frauds who come here to hype their sites are very quickly figured out, and find themselves unwelcome. I sell no product. Lately I have mentioned my room at yahoo, because of a rather extreme interest in a trading method that I use. I am willing to take time to show anyone interested in this method for free. All I ask in return is that if you find it fits your personality, is that you remain there, and help us all not miss any trades. -------------------------------------------------- I hope these comments all make sense, and don't seem like just the musings of a hung over fraternity guy. I am sure that there are many replys, and please direct them at whoever, in whatever manner is appropriate. There is no reason to ever stifle spirited conversation.
Firstly, to spud, I take issue with your comment directed to the senior members of this forum. To augment praetorian's response, one reason I have the time to post and spend a good amount of time at these forums is that I am a swing trader who does not need to watch my trades tick by tick all day long, and can browse around during the day. Second, as a moderator of two of the forums, it is my job to monitor the threads and help maintain a professional and proper atmosphere, which requires being on these boards regularly. This brings me to the final point. As moderator of the trading forum, I have watched this thread and considered deleting it entirely. However, while tradermike's original post may have contained certain comments that could be construed as a sales pitch, it was not blatant or cut and dry, as opposed to for instance yourtrader2001's periodic posts where he simply lists a bunch of software for sale. I would prefer not to have to be an overbearing censor, immediately deleting material that might be marginally questionable. I will take immediate action against anyone making outright personal attacks or blatant sales pitches. However, it seems that any personal attacks on this thread took place by other members against tradermike, who did mention in passing that he runs a newsletter, but in my judgement was far from a come on or sales pitch. As far as his other comments about trading, they are his experiences and opinions, which he is as entitled to as anyone here. This thread has become questionable, as other members have taken to attacks. Rather than delete the entire thread, I have contacted Baron and requested that this thread be closed and moved into the archives. However, be advised that I will now be much more stringent on personal attacks of any kind, and will be less hesitant going forward to delete posts of this nature. I will NOT allow this forum to become like the Yahoo or SI boards.
Spud-ditto for me on Prae2's comments. You are on this site since June 2001. A lousy month and a half my friend. Dustin has already(graciously I might add)pointed this out to you- obviously to no avail. Where the heck do you come off questioning the legitamacy of our senior members. Are you bonkers. You will make no friends here with these stupid attacks. "Let's clean this site up"-WHAT? Again you are here a month and a half-how could you possibly come to that determination. ------No Spud this thread is not like your last thread Hyping---etc. in which you defamed Robert tharp. My best advice to you is just watch and learn and temper the rhetoric.
Zboy-our last 2 posts must have crossed. Had I seen your post I probably would have held mine back. Absolutely no disrespect intended.
Someone gave these as reasons to "flame the thread": "Tradermike sells a newsletter which he referred to as "free" (which it is not) in his first post. When questioned, he edited his post and claimed that he had not even mentioned it. " False. Nowhere did I claim that I didn't mention that. I changed the bottom tagline because people were mad about it. Some of them need to get a life and not obsess over such trivial details. "This message board is about traders sharing ideas to help and encourage one another to become better traders. The theme of this thread is the erronous idea that becoming a daytrader is almost impossible. Obviously this is a conflict of purpose." I think I addressed some key issues about trading and the emotional aspects of it. "The initial post on this thread refers to daytrading as a "mental illness". : No I said for some people daytrading is a form of "mental illness" just like any othe addition. Gambling for instance. I talked about that how it pertained to myself and daytrading for instance. "The person making these allegations about daytrading is not an accomplished trader himself, in fact, he is an admitted failure. Think about it, if you want to become a doctor, do you go out and ask someone who flunked out of medical school? : I have an 800% gain in the past 3 years. How can one say that is not an accomplishment? Yes, I failed at daytrading and made my money when I switched to a longer time frame of holding for days to weeks - and sometimes months. "Many newer/aspiring traders read this board. It is important not to let one self serving poster lure them away from their dreams only because no one took the time to challenge the incorrect assertations. " Yep. They need to know about the perils of daytrading. If they want to daytrade they need to prepare for them. In hindsight I think the real thing that got people like you upset is my title of the thread. If I could go back I would change it, but it is too late. Moderator said that it will soon be shut down and placed into an archive so it will end soon.
Praetorian said: "I admit that daytrading is probably the most difficult profession around. But if you want to put in the time and effort, it is most likely the most financially rewarding one around. I have no real motives, but you are flatly wrong for thinking that most traders have stopped trading, or are adapting to something of a much longer timeframe. " I'd be curious how you have or haven't changed your strategy during this bear market. Or how other daytraders have. I know I've changed what I do somewhat so would be curious what others who were successful did.
TraderMike, Perhaps I judged you unfairly. If in the weeks to come you continue to participate on this board outside the original context of this thread, then you will not hear a single complaint from me. If your purpose is simply to discuss the negative aspects of daytrading or the virtues of a swing/investing style, then i encourage you to start or pick up a thread that pertains to that subject. The reason this thread was offensive to me was because i percieved the intent of your posts to be directing others to a pay-for-picks type service. If this was truly not your aim, then i apologize and i hope to see you participate in discussions to come. -qwik
TraderMike asks how we've changed strategies since the onset of the bear market. For me, not one bit! I trade ES exclusively, all I need is sufficient volatility one way or the other to make money. Perhaps 2-3 days a month the S&P is too mired in an extended, narrow trading range to make any money........But the rest of the time..........Bull market, bear market is utterly immaterial. All prices have to do is MOVE.
I'm a daytrader myself and I was initially distraught by the title of this thread. As I read the posts I got emotional and a little upset. I've been used to civility in these forums and when I saw what was going on it was a little distressing. But, being a diplomat by nature, I tried to figure out how this little skirmish could be resolved. Zboy's comments and quicktrade's recent post have put me at ease now and I think this discussion would be more productive if it had a different name. A cardinal rule of diplomacy is to see things from both sides. I took a look at Mike's thread over on SI. It was rather successful and it was called "the coming financial collapse of 2001". It was quite a controversial issue at the time because there were so many people who had there hopes tied up in long term tech positions that were beginning to falter. In that situation, people would have been well advised if they had listened to him. I don't feel like he is right in this situation however. But here's why I think he created such a controversial thread topic. As we all know, S.I. runs a lot differently than this board. And I'm glad of that. Here, the second you post on any thread it goes right to the top of the list. Over there, the only way to get the best people to discuss on your board is to get a big number of posts, so that means posting something a lot of people disagree with. I think that this is just a case of tradermike not knowing how the board is run. True, maybe he should have paid more attention in the first place. But since his first post he has been more than civil under tremendous personal attacks. I feel like he was just playing devil's advocate for an issue that this thread truly needs to discuss. Not whether or not there is a better time frame, but the general lack of support and disbelief when you tell someone you're going to be a daytrader. When becoming a daytrader you are going to face a tremendous amount of this kind of opposition. To be able to push through and become successful you have to overcome this kind of disbelief (in daytrading) from your family, friends, coworkers etc. If newbies don't have the fortitude to overcome some anonymous post on a message board they probably won't have what it takes to become a successful daytrader. The amount of obstacles you run up against (eg trading losses, stress, sec rulings(see my post in "deathblow"page13)) is huge when trying to get into this business, as I know you successful traders have experienced. With this devil's advocacy that tradermike has provided we can learn how to counteract his argument in a civil way. This kind of dialogue would be of tremendous value to the newbies who will have to defend their choice of career to their families, coworkers, and friends. Like I said earlier, I think tradermike was just trying to get a dialogue going with the best people and didn't realize that he didn't have to be controversial to do that here. So maybe they can archive this thread and we'll talk about the best ways to defend daytrading on new thread so that the newbies have some real intelligent rebuttles to arguments rather than just attacks. I, like most of you, want to protect this site from negativity, but that's no reason to kick the new kid out for messing up the first time. I for one may have to change my strategy because of the new rules coming out. And if I'm not able to "pattern daytrade" in the near future I still want to be able to get something out of this board, for example I'd like to see more swingtraders and longer termers posting here. Just a thought. Thanks for reading my post, and thanks to all of you members and senior members for the help you provide here. It's very much appreciated. Tailspin
Tail-(this will be my last post on subject)I believe you missed the point. I'm not quarrelling with Mike's swing strategy. I'm glad he's posting it here for discussion and thought. I'm questioning his motive. To me it's clear he was directing us to his site which at first he declared was free. It's not free-case closed.