Comments on: How would you rate my day trading earnings from Jan 1 through Feb 4 (YTD)?

By: Doctor Deth

Doctor Deth — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 11:25:59 +0000

I’d rate it an F for Failure

the S&P , DJIA and Nasdaq are only down 1.6% – 3.5% YTD thru yesterday
my 401k is up slightly YTD
I’m down a few % in some out-of-401k investments
so I would say you are doing pretty bad so far this year
metals are not supposed to go up much short term

gold is only down 3% since Jan 11th, not 25% – where are you getting your data from??

what are you investing in that has you down 40% in only 5 weeks? the market as a whole has not been doing that bad

if you are buying stocks when they are going down, you have to hold them long term to make any money on them – selling when they go lower guarantees a loss – you would be much better just putting your money in a bank cd before you lose all your money since you don;t seem to know what you are doing
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By: Scott

Scott — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 10:49:59 +0000

I would say that's pretty bad. You seem to want to day trade but seem to not be willing to short sell. You cannot be successful as a day trader if you cannot short. Had you shorted all of those longs you took then you would be in the positive. One more thing, dollar cost averaging down, is just throwing good money after bad. If a position moves against you get out....get out now. It is much better to take a small loss than to try and average down and end up with a huge loss.
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By: scobranchi

scobranchi — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 10:22:59 +0000

I think that you’ve answered your own question. You’ve lost 41% in a month! I don’t think you could do much worse if you tried. Daytrading is nothing more than gambling or guessing at best. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no consistent way to judge the daily fluctuations of the market. Also, trading on an extremely short term is even tougher due to the tax penalties and trading fees eating-up more of your profits. It’s next to impossible to make any money on it. I believe the statistics show that a huge percentage of day traders lose money…plain and simple.

There’s nothing wrong with investing in precious metals. However, I would strongly recommend that you extend your event horizon out longer than daily or even weekly no matter what sectors you’re invested in. Everything you invest doesn’t have to be long term buy and hold but you need to consider looking at 3-6 month windows if you’re looking to churn a portion of your portfolio . As long as you’ve done your homework, even if a stock drops a little after you’ve bought it, you should have the confidence that it will go up in the long term. If not or if continues to drop, you’ve obviously missed something in evaluating the stock whether your research was on the fundamentals or you picked the stock purely for momentum. Good luck.
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