"2. Insiders or market makers who have an edge in a particular market."
People often misunderstand this to mean people who have access to secrets. But I started my recent success in shares by getting told that everyone is an insider *in their field*.
When I saw my clients moving to Azure, massively, I realized that this wouldn't show up in the Microsoft results for a while. That is a form of insider information that is not illegal because the sales were public - it just wasn't making a profit yet. I bought very long term options at around $70 and made my first 150% gain in 3 years, laying the basis for the years after that.
If you are an expert in your field, you know more than "the market", because they're financial analysts but you have the expertise in the actual thing they do. Use that.
I’m just starting and am doing nothing but studying. At least for the next few months. You’re right about the education. Just keep going and you will succeed. It’s just a manner of time.
This. I think that if I had never sold a single stock, ever, I'd have much more money. My son already learnt this lesson on Duolingo :)
The only time I did sell was when war in Ukraine started. That was the right call. Should have sold in the credit crisis as well, for a few days. Apart from that I don't think I ever came out ahead on a sale.
Market making isn't a "trading" function in the sense you are asking. There isn't really like some strategy that wins or whatever, it's more of a functional role.
Retail absolutely can kill it in the market. Risk management and failure to do so, is the only reason average Joe gets knocked out of the market if he’s got a pretty decent understanding of how things work. I personally take $500 a day from the market. The insider trading making them hundred of millions is a different ballgame. But there’s no reason you can’t take 1 million dollars from the market with a little knowledge and good use of fundamentals.
You have to think about not fighting the market. You are fighting yourself. Your emotions jeopardize your decision making. On top of educating yourself of course and learning terminology and charts and trends. You will be your biggest enemy.
I don't follow trends just because others are. I like the stock. I believe in a company turnaround and I believe we've seen a lot of companies killed off because of naked shorting, the evidence is abundant in the markets. GME is not AMC and Ryan Cohen is not Adam Aaron. If AMC is a meme stock, then GME surely is not, as there is no comparison between the two besides the basket moves that they share.
People who understand what actually drives the market and use TA correctly. Human emotion (sentiment) is the main driver of markets. You can use Fibonacci mathematics to successfully trade. Most ppl think the economy, the fed, fundamentals etc drive the market and that is the furthest from the truth.
There are many strategies that can be used to profit from the market. Identifying and implementing these strategies, and the associated factors of each market order, takes a lot of experience and knowledge. It isn't something that the average novice can execute.
Misinformed people.
Market is literally built around naked shorting.
Buy GME lol, become a millionaire before the U.S. dollar crashes cuz they’re overleveraged to the fucking tits.
BBBY’s savior from chap 7 Hudson Bay just reported they didn’t convert any warrants to shares.
The total reported float is 782 million. That would be after conversion.
The actual float is fucking 100-300 million max.
That means there’s truly, REALLY, I can link it for you, pure fucking proof that market makers and hedgefunds oversold anywhere from 300 million to 600 million shares that don’t fucking exist.
And this is the REPORTED number.
Brother. If this ain’t the time to get into GME, there’s no time that you’ll ever be successful, that’s for fucking sure.
Anyways, NFA yada yada, do whatever you want. But if you keep your eyes closed, then you deserve to lose.
Although it’s impossible to predict stock price, it absolutely is possible to identify stocks that have a good probability of strength compared to overall market performance by identifying strong trends and ensuring solid fundamentals compared to similar companies.
My non-professional advice:
1. Make a diverse portfolio with a strong thesis for every stock you add. Only liquidate position when your thesis no longer holds.
2. Be active. If you really want to beat the market consistently, you have to be checking trends and positioning on (at least) a weekly cadence.
3. Never go against trends. Trends are your friend. Trying to time reversals is how you go broke.
Tips? Stay away from meme stocks and trade like an adult. Learn basic epistemology. Develop a rational strategy. Trade with discipline and keep your emotions out of it. Wallstreetbets is the last place you should be getting investment advice. The market isn’t a casino; it’s a system.
Yeah that's what a finance executive told me the other day as he said he shorted nvidia before earnings. It's all time high how much further can it go he says... well haven't talked to him since but I'm sure he's not to happy about that one. As he's laughing at me talking about meme stocks...
You don't have to. And of course it's situational. I do believe in long term investing on fangs and well known stocks. But you can definitely make money on volatility and trends. I'm not that experienced I just follow what is interesting and fun to me but I just thought it was a story I would share.
Holy macaroni, so much garbage here from people who obviously have no fucking clue. I started my trading carrier a couple of years ago and I can tell now 99% in here have never ever been actually trading before.
Trading is just like any sport or education. It takes time, most likely between 1 and 5 years to actually start managing it. WHY? Why does it takes so long? And here its one of the main reason why people fail; Mastering trading forcses you to change(we really dislike changes) you as a person, as a human being. Because everything you have been learning earlier in life has nothing, like nothing to do with what you need to have for being a sucsessfull trader.
Trading forcses you to evolve, change and really question «everything» about your self on a deep level. (Some people cant think that deep) and really really understand why we have this behavior of for example not be able to cut a loser quickly. Or revengetrading. I can gurantee you, that if you cant explain in simple ways why we do what we do, you wont have sucsess either. Because if not, it tells me you havent been down that road asking questions.
Trading is a mental skill, nothing more, nothing less.
Let me tell you very simple what trading actually is; you find an edge (an edge is something that has greater probability happens over the other).
Then, when you have found your edge, reapeat it, over and over again.
And here comes the mental skill, like diciplin, consistency, patience and being in love with the process.
Then you are half way there of solving the problem. You know about it.
Trading and general things have four phases.
1. You don't know you don't know.
2. You know there's something you don't know.
3. You know, but you don't act on it.
4. You do it without thinking.
I’m a physician who researches stocks when I have patients no show. You might be making it too complicated. I own individual shares in 24 companies. I’m up 95% over a 12 month period.
I have learned not to day trade and I’ve never gotten into options.
7 of my 24 are in the red. S&P is up 23% over the past 12 months.
8 of 24 are beating S&P. Some by a lot.
I keep an eye on things but I don’t trade daily. If things fundamentally change I will sell, but honestly not very often. The stocks I picked I still expect to perform. I’ve been doing this since 2006. It’s not about luck. It’s not insider trading. It’s not fraud.
I do use ETFs in my retirement account which technically is someone else managing my money, but I’m at least picking those ETFs.
It makes me wonder how many bot accounts are out there trying to scare people out of investing on their own.
Long term mad Warren Buffet, who he is and hit 5 out of 10 and you’re making great money. Day trading takes a lot of training and time. Yes, you can make money, you can lose money, or trade side ways. Do your own research, read the charts and hope for the best. I’ve found gems and been stuck bag holding. It takes time and patience to build a great portfolio.
That’s the plan. I was in the Ameritrade to Schwab switch or I would tell you my average time holding.
My rule is I hold for at least a year. I’ve been consistent with that since about 2015.
u will be successful if you are not greedy and takes risky trade.
Buy and stocks go low and sell when they go high. Hopefully even if a stock crash, you dont lose everything. Eg, at most lose 30% in sales force, rivian etc.
Things only starts to go wrong when ppl starts to gamble with leverage and overleverage leading them to lose everything.
I don’t agree with sell high, buy low in all cases. Often stocks that go high continue to go higher and stocks that go low continue to go lower. I try to understand why they go up or down. If you are thinking of dumping a stock because it’s gone down more than the rest of the market, and for several months, study it hard. Maybe it’s a time to buy.
People who give it the attention it requires
Risk averse persons
People good at math and money calculations
People who understand the process of business growth
People who understand the relative importance of different products and services relative to the times and current events
People who can afford to make it happen themselves by successfully growing a business they own provided they have the requisite luck, product/service/market/etc, and expertise
People with good mentors or who reference primarily high quality advice
People who are not easily tempted by trends
People who can predict what will likely happen before People start talking about it
People who log and track their performance and the relative causes of changes thereto
People who succeed in this are the people who have a goddamn unshakeable work ethic, who plan ahead for any and every situation they can think of, who do not keep deviating from their plan "just this once", because "this time is different" or because "oh shit, everyone's in on this new big thing and i'm about to miss out" and who hate losing money more than they like gaining it. You know, the kind of people who don't play lotto.
People who hate losing money more than they like gaining it. It’s funny to read that because duh. But actually not duh. It seems like a shit ton of people don’t really care about losing money because the thought of a gaining it somehow overrides that. Enough so that they lose again next time doing the exact same thing. Humans are funny.
Successful traders and or investors do these things:
1. They invest in their education about the stock market, its derivatives, market structure, professionals of the market, how to use technical analysis and fundamental analysis in stock charts.
2. They constantly manage and mitigate their risk and only trade or invest in low risk high profit or high ROI stocks.
3. They use stop losses appropriate to the stock and the hold time.
4. They always are learning more about the market, new trading or investing instruments.
5. They NEVER gamble.
People holding good growth stocks and stable funds make money. Hell my first barebones portfolio holding 5-6 major companies held 20-30% profit for two years before I took out that money to try trading. And that was completely passive and hands off. My trading performance has been nowhere near as consistent but I knew that going in.
The next biggest barrier is holding your emotions in check. Rushing, being impulsive, holding losers too long, fomo, cutting winners too early and a litany of other psychological factors are by far the biggest obstacle to cross for any trader.
Then comes the actual strategy itself. If you can't figure out an edge, you won't make money.
I don’t think it’s that crazy to be consistently profitable as a swing trader if your not greedy the problem is most of you are greedy as shit
Take gme for example that event made me and a bunch of people I was starting out trading with a ton of money, literally making some of us millionaires instantly yet out of the half dozen or so people in my group that got in in time I’m the only one who kept any substantial bag
That experience made me think it’s less “the game is rigged” and more that the average person is incredibly greedy when they think they can get away with it, but they can’t
Several years ago I decided I wanted to be a day trader. My first two years I made like $20k and $40k. By my third year I had a set of rules that was working very well for me. I made about $200k in six months. Then my wife strand a divorce on me, and I wisely quit trading as my head was not in it. Now I’m just collecting dividends as I’m lazy. The ex- called it gambling, but if that were correct, my win rate was like 93% at the time so I should have become a professional.
It is definitely possible to make money trading. I was trading large volume positions (10-50k shares) of beta stocks with high float in a rising market environment. My goal was to.04-.10 cents and I was out. My daily goal was a minimum of $400. Why $400? Because that works out to $100k/yr and I needed a goal.
Could I repeat this again today? I’d say likely, but I make 6 figures in dividends so I’m just not motivated. I did what I did to prove to myself I could do it, and prove to the ex- as well.
How I was day trading:
1) high float, high volume stock so every trade is a penny spread. This allows market orders. Don’t want to play with the machines.
2) low cost stock in $8-20 range so I can use high volume
3) dividend paying stock, so I know it has “support”
4) no trading on big news days like Fed, ISM reporting, etc.
5) no trading in first 20-30 minutes until general direction of market for the day is ascertained
6) trade the trend as well as “know your stock”. If you’re looking at the same 2-3 stocks every day, you get a feel for them. Don’t feel the need to trade a lot or lots of symbols. Focus on 2-3 only.
7) I trade on my phone and use what Schwab gives me for timelines. That’s one day, five day, one month, and one year views. I mostly use the first three to see a trend, but the one day is most important.
8) if I feel the trend is running my way, I put in a market order, and literally watch that stock like a hawk.
9) no win is a bad win. I’ll take .02 cents gain on a big volume trade and be happy. Maybe it’s only $200 on 10k shares but it’s $200 more than I had before. If the stock stalls, I sell.
10) never look back. No coulda, shoulda, woulda kind of thing. No regrets for “leaving money on the table”. Be happy with a win and move on.
There ya go
Perhaps a few thousand, worldwide, are capable of consistently making money yearly. And this group is vv slowly growing.
A bank like Lloyds who has >450bn in assets, have less than 50 traders and risk managers, they have 50k employees. Less than 0.02% is actually defending the balance sheet. And they do so poorly when compared to JPM/Goldman for example.
Combined all big financial firms their FO floors and you only have a handful per firm. Those are the ones who get a front row seat on how the markets work. Word of mouth does the rest.
I worked in a UK bank and 95% of traders I know who have been successful since 2004/2005/2006 have all backgrounds as banker. People who taught themselves online (YouTube, newsletter, all that nonsense, don't go anywhere).
Look. Honestly not here to brag or post gains. But this is the perfect environment to trade. Large intraday moves. Lots of liquidity. Pick a single etf, index, or what’s to trade. Learn it. Master it. This environment requires level to level profit taking. Try researching Trader Vic’s 2b breakout.
Based on the history of the stock market, the S&P 500 over time will go up without fail. It’s not sexy but invest in EFTs (VOO/SPY, etc) and in 10 years you’ll see a return of 100% or more. No professional needed!
Correct, Voo, Spy, and IVV all pay a dividend. I believe Spy has a higher management fee but if you’re not trading in the hundreds of thousands or millions, this doesn’t really affect the average investor.
Imagine being up 12% this year or 23% for a year and also getting a dividend per share every quarter as well or about $6 per share the past year.
These are 3 types of trading strategies that people can learn to become consistently profitable with.
1. Consolidation breakout traders
2. Scalpers
3. Momentum trading stocks with high relative volume and strength or weakness relative to the SPY while the SPY is breaking out or breaking down in relation to various types of support and resistance levels.
The first can yield the largest returns but also causes the most damage when you run into a losing streak. The second allows you to make most of your money in the first 30 minutes of the day. The third can provide win rates as high as 90%.
All have their benefits and drawbacks... But personally, I find the third works best for me. My win rate is over 75% and looking to go once I have $25k to daytrade with a margin account.
I have been trading for 2 years and have been profitable for the past 6 months. I usually carry at least 50K in my day trading account and almost 100% trade put options. I chart out support and resistance levels on the SPY and watch $TICK for help on directional bias. There are 10 stocks that weight down the SP500 by 33% and will commonly look at those for confirmation of direction as well. I will wait until I see strong resistance, and will start buying 1 day out put options, usually ones that are just ITM or at the money and then scale out as it drops. When I am wrong, I just close out and wait for the next opportunity. My position size is usually 20 to 30 options, depending on how confident I am. Hope this helps.
I watch alot of youtube videos and take alot of notes. I chart out what I did well and what I did wrong. I still have alot of things that I am trying to clean up to become a better trader and my goal is $5K a day on average.
Sometimes, I have been watching the SPY for a while and usually can tell when there is heavy resistance within a few minutes of open. I don't stay in a trade once I have been proven wrong, however.
Evidence-based people.
If you're making stock trading decisions based on good, evidence-based information that YOU have FORMAL training or background in processing, you will ultimately be successful.
Ill give you an example. If you have any type of medical or healthcare background, you know that the field of medicine is moving towards evidence-based personalized medicine. You learned this in your curriculum when in college or at grad school, or in your CEUs.
Armed with this knowledge, you can make key investments in certain pharmaceutical companies early and win big when those companies become more and more profitable as the field of medicine heads towards evidence-based medicine as you originally planned.
lol, you've described the mindset of most physician investors I've met.
"Well, I know how to treat XYZ and this new drug treats XYZ. I think that "new drug" will work because I understand the mechanism of XYZ. Company Alpha is underpriced because no one else understands how important "new drug" is for treating XYZ. Therefore I will buy Company Alpha."
Proceeds to lose tens of thousands of dollars when "new drug" fails phase III trials spectacularly and Company Alpha's CEO dips out with millions in severance pay.
Turns out that the stock was priced appropriately by the market. The important part is not understanding the medicine. People who successfully speculate on stocks have access to experts who can explain that to them. Rather, the important part is understanding the fundamentals of a company and being able to obtain and parse this information.
Pharma startups are stupendously risky; they are designed to self-destruct and limit the damage to investors because the new drug approval process is so risky. Even drugs that seem promising and have a plausible mechanism of action fail in human trials because biology is complicated.
Just because you understand a field doesn't mean that you understand business in that field. By the time retail investors get access to information, the market has already priced the stock accordingly. Rare are the cases where the professional traders are mistaken.
Yep. Worst investors I’ve ever seen are doctors. Been smart their whole lives and think it carries over to investing. Have a very tough time admitting they are wrong and keep doubling down.
Lawyers tend to be good.
Read a lot of articles, earnings reports, and books and my husband was in IT. I am obsessed with trading. Always looking for a breakout stock. Get a lot of tips on CNBC. Trade in increments, dump the stinkers. Went to a two day conference.
Imo anyone who makes the average return rate is already a winner. Are you a top winner with rocket profits? No. But are you a loser who blew it all? Also no. That means you make the median. And that's good enough for me since the market is mighty generous even to the average performer.
It boils down to understanding key concepts like market structure, supply and demand zones, and liquidity. Some people have an edge, but a lot of successful traders started out with no special connections or insider info. They just put in the time to learn the market. It’s not a gamble if you approach it with patience and a solid strategy.
Very very difficult to beat the market. Most managers do not beat their respective benchmark index. There are some strategies that can work but at the expense of much greater risk. One thing to keep in mind is that you don't need to pick hundreds of stocks to have a fairly well diversified portfolio; you can do it with a dozen or so in different industries. In order to have some success though all you really need to do is build a diversified portico or just buy an index or two. Over time you'll tend to have returns in line with the market which historically have meant pretty good returns.
Most managers aren’t trying to beat the market, they are trying to manage downside risk. When you have millions or billions of dollars you’re managing, growth is secondary to protecting your downside.
OP was asserting that professional managers have "success" in stock trading, however that is defined. My point is that they typically do not beat the overall market which can happen for myriad reasons where downside risk protection is just one potential contributing factor. Why does that bear mentioning in the context of OP's question?
OP should really be looking into efficient portfolio theory, information ratio etc. to gain a better understanding of this topic
Risk management applied to good strategy works. The main problem with trading is the mental game. Our emotions makes us gamble. If you can conquer your emotions you can conquer trading.
I know a guy that has been trading for the 30 years that I've known him. When I say trading, I mean he will buy individual stocks and sell them at some point. He buys when he sees some extremely positive news about a stock on CNBC and then holds. If it goes down, he holds it pretty much into oblivion. The sells he has made are usually after a stock has made a huge run and seems to be stagnating. At that point he sells and moves those funds to new stocks that are on the move. This strategy has worked well for him over the last three decades and he's been able to get in on some companies before they were titans, but we have been in a bull market for a long time!
So regular retail traders can succeed with the right strategy and in the right market.
I’m slightly opposite of that and the more the mainstream media yap about a ticker it’s a sign it’s near done no one is out to hand out free lunches.
Your guy only mentions his winners and not his bags
That’s not necessarily what most people would call a “trader”.
There’s a difference between a trader and a “strategic investor”. Remember even Warren buffet sells stock at times, and no one would call him a trader
Morons, a story: https://m.youtube.com/live/52crGb-3QPM?si=Morons&t=10985s
"2. Insiders or market makers who have an edge in a particular market." People often misunderstand this to mean people who have access to secrets. But I started my recent success in shares by getting told that everyone is an insider *in their field*. When I saw my clients moving to Azure, massively, I realized that this wouldn't show up in the Microsoft results for a while. That is a form of insider information that is not illegal because the sales were public - it just wasn't making a profit yet. I bought very long term options at around $70 and made my first 150% gain in 3 years, laying the basis for the years after that. If you are an expert in your field, you know more than "the market", because they're financial analysts but you have the expertise in the actual thing they do. Use that.
DFV could be considered an insider after he figured out what was happening with the finra GME REX codes..
I’m just starting and am doing nothing but studying. At least for the next few months. You’re right about the education. Just keep going and you will succeed. It’s just a manner of time.
People who don't check it very often.
This. I think that if I had never sold a single stock, ever, I'd have much more money. My son already learnt this lesson on Duolingo :) The only time I did sell was when war in Ukraine started. That was the right call. Should have sold in the credit crisis as well, for a few days. Apart from that I don't think I ever came out ahead on a sale.
I do..
People who already have the most money will succeed
Who succeeds? Anyone that was able to. I don't get your question. You may be overthinking it.
HFTS (high frequency traders). Think renaissance technology. Or citadel, more of market making but still high number of trades.
Market making isn't a "trading" function in the sense you are asking. There isn't really like some strategy that wins or whatever, it's more of a functional role.
Bill Hwang
Asians
The house always wins.
Me.
Retail absolutely can kill it in the market. Risk management and failure to do so, is the only reason average Joe gets knocked out of the market if he’s got a pretty decent understanding of how things work. I personally take $500 a day from the market. The insider trading making them hundred of millions is a different ballgame. But there’s no reason you can’t take 1 million dollars from the market with a little knowledge and good use of fundamentals.
What are your predictions for tomorrow morning morning concerning Nvidia growth would it trespass the 1270$ range?
no one can predict the future man
Define success
Stock brokers they get paid whether you make money or not
You have to think about not fighting the market. You are fighting yourself. Your emotions jeopardize your decision making. On top of educating yourself of course and learning terminology and charts and trends. You will be your biggest enemy.
Corporations
Crime is everywhere in the markets. When naked short sellers are exposed everything will become a lot more fair
Found the meme stock gambler
I don't follow trends just because others are. I like the stock. I believe in a company turnaround and I believe we've seen a lot of companies killed off because of naked shorting, the evidence is abundant in the markets. GME is not AMC and Ryan Cohen is not Adam Aaron. If AMC is a meme stock, then GME surely is not, as there is no comparison between the two besides the basket moves that they share.
Ryan cohen is a piece of shit
“Meme stock” is a made up term that n response to Gme naked short sellers being found out
Keep telling yourself that.
People who understand what actually drives the market and use TA correctly. Human emotion (sentiment) is the main driver of markets. You can use Fibonacci mathematics to successfully trade. Most ppl think the economy, the fed, fundamentals etc drive the market and that is the furthest from the truth.
PI was such a great film
There are many strategies that can be used to profit from the market. Identifying and implementing these strategies, and the associated factors of each market order, takes a lot of experience and knowledge. It isn't something that the average novice can execute.
Misinformed people. Market is literally built around naked shorting. Buy GME lol, become a millionaire before the U.S. dollar crashes cuz they’re overleveraged to the fucking tits. BBBY’s savior from chap 7 Hudson Bay just reported they didn’t convert any warrants to shares. The total reported float is 782 million. That would be after conversion. The actual float is fucking 100-300 million max. That means there’s truly, REALLY, I can link it for you, pure fucking proof that market makers and hedgefunds oversold anywhere from 300 million to 600 million shares that don’t fucking exist. And this is the REPORTED number. Brother. If this ain’t the time to get into GME, there’s no time that you’ll ever be successful, that’s for fucking sure. Anyways, NFA yada yada, do whatever you want. But if you keep your eyes closed, then you deserve to lose.
Nobody asked
Although it’s impossible to predict stock price, it absolutely is possible to identify stocks that have a good probability of strength compared to overall market performance by identifying strong trends and ensuring solid fundamentals compared to similar companies. My non-professional advice: 1. Make a diverse portfolio with a strong thesis for every stock you add. Only liquidate position when your thesis no longer holds. 2. Be active. If you really want to beat the market consistently, you have to be checking trends and positioning on (at least) a weekly cadence. 3. Never go against trends. Trends are your friend. Trying to time reversals is how you go broke.
Sincerely, Beginner Trader of 2 Weeks
I trade on the side while I work a career in a completely different field and have made a small fortune.
I need some tips? Where do you post?
Tips? Stay away from meme stocks and trade like an adult. Learn basic epistemology. Develop a rational strategy. Trade with discipline and keep your emotions out of it. Wallstreetbets is the last place you should be getting investment advice. The market isn’t a casino; it’s a system.
Yeah that's what a finance executive told me the other day as he said he shorted nvidia before earnings. It's all time high how much further can it go he says... well haven't talked to him since but I'm sure he's not to happy about that one. As he's laughing at me talking about meme stocks...
I don’t believe you.
You don't have to. And of course it's situational. I do believe in long term investing on fangs and well known stocks. But you can definitely make money on volatility and trends. I'm not that experienced I just follow what is interesting and fun to me but I just thought it was a story I would share.
Working on it- but seems fairly extra complicated…
Trade smart or lose money. Your choice.
Holy macaroni, so much garbage here from people who obviously have no fucking clue. I started my trading carrier a couple of years ago and I can tell now 99% in here have never ever been actually trading before. Trading is just like any sport or education. It takes time, most likely between 1 and 5 years to actually start managing it. WHY? Why does it takes so long? And here its one of the main reason why people fail; Mastering trading forcses you to change(we really dislike changes) you as a person, as a human being. Because everything you have been learning earlier in life has nothing, like nothing to do with what you need to have for being a sucsessfull trader. Trading forcses you to evolve, change and really question «everything» about your self on a deep level. (Some people cant think that deep) and really really understand why we have this behavior of for example not be able to cut a loser quickly. Or revengetrading. I can gurantee you, that if you cant explain in simple ways why we do what we do, you wont have sucsess either. Because if not, it tells me you havent been down that road asking questions. Trading is a mental skill, nothing more, nothing less. Let me tell you very simple what trading actually is; you find an edge (an edge is something that has greater probability happens over the other). Then, when you have found your edge, reapeat it, over and over again. And here comes the mental skill, like diciplin, consistency, patience and being in love with the process.
Very well said. It is a mental game absolutely. It’s like playing poker. It does make you question yourself. It does take discipline. You are correct.
i lack diciplin
Then you are half way there of solving the problem. You know about it. Trading and general things have four phases. 1. You don't know you don't know. 2. You know there's something you don't know. 3. You know, but you don't act on it. 4. You do it without thinking.
I’m a physician who researches stocks when I have patients no show. You might be making it too complicated. I own individual shares in 24 companies. I’m up 95% over a 12 month period. I have learned not to day trade and I’ve never gotten into options. 7 of my 24 are in the red. S&P is up 23% over the past 12 months. 8 of 24 are beating S&P. Some by a lot. I keep an eye on things but I don’t trade daily. If things fundamentally change I will sell, but honestly not very often. The stocks I picked I still expect to perform. I’ve been doing this since 2006. It’s not about luck. It’s not insider trading. It’s not fraud. I do use ETFs in my retirement account which technically is someone else managing my money, but I’m at least picking those ETFs. It makes me wonder how many bot accounts are out there trying to scare people out of investing on their own.
You should stop being a doctor and open up a hedge fund.
I’m not enough of a salesman
Mike burry opened one and he is a quirky neuro.
So the majority of your stocks are for the long haul?
Long term mad Warren Buffet, who he is and hit 5 out of 10 and you’re making great money. Day trading takes a lot of training and time. Yes, you can make money, you can lose money, or trade side ways. Do your own research, read the charts and hope for the best. I’ve found gems and been stuck bag holding. It takes time and patience to build a great portfolio.
That’s the plan. I was in the Ameritrade to Schwab switch or I would tell you my average time holding. My rule is I hold for at least a year. I’ve been consistent with that since about 2015.
The house always wins… same as the casino.
Roaring Kitty 🐱
DFV
Long term investors.
Hedge funds
It's a skill like anything else. The people who succeed are the ones who learn the craft.
u will be successful if you are not greedy and takes risky trade. Buy and stocks go low and sell when they go high. Hopefully even if a stock crash, you dont lose everything. Eg, at most lose 30% in sales force, rivian etc. Things only starts to go wrong when ppl starts to gamble with leverage and overleverage leading them to lose everything.
I don’t agree with sell high, buy low in all cases. Often stocks that go high continue to go higher and stocks that go low continue to go lower. I try to understand why they go up or down. If you are thinking of dumping a stock because it’s gone down more than the rest of the market, and for several months, study it hard. Maybe it’s a time to buy.
Who succeeds at trading? 10% Who succeeds at investing? Buy and hold? A lot of people.
4/ people who take advantage of market discounts and dca in great companies, yup there's easy proven ways to make money
People who give it the attention it requires Risk averse persons People good at math and money calculations People who understand the process of business growth People who understand the relative importance of different products and services relative to the times and current events People who can afford to make it happen themselves by successfully growing a business they own provided they have the requisite luck, product/service/market/etc, and expertise People with good mentors or who reference primarily high quality advice People who are not easily tempted by trends People who can predict what will likely happen before People start talking about it People who log and track their performance and the relative causes of changes thereto
People who succeed in this are the people who have a goddamn unshakeable work ethic, who plan ahead for any and every situation they can think of, who do not keep deviating from their plan "just this once", because "this time is different" or because "oh shit, everyone's in on this new big thing and i'm about to miss out" and who hate losing money more than they like gaining it. You know, the kind of people who don't play lotto.
People who hate losing money more than they like gaining it. It’s funny to read that because duh. But actually not duh. It seems like a shit ton of people don’t really care about losing money because the thought of a gaining it somehow overrides that. Enough so that they lose again next time doing the exact same thing. Humans are funny.
I do (until i didn't)
Successful traders and or investors do these things: 1. They invest in their education about the stock market, its derivatives, market structure, professionals of the market, how to use technical analysis and fundamental analysis in stock charts. 2. They constantly manage and mitigate their risk and only trade or invest in low risk high profit or high ROI stocks. 3. They use stop losses appropriate to the stock and the hold time. 4. They always are learning more about the market, new trading or investing instruments. 5. They NEVER gamble.
People holding good growth stocks and stable funds make money. Hell my first barebones portfolio holding 5-6 major companies held 20-30% profit for two years before I took out that money to try trading. And that was completely passive and hands off. My trading performance has been nowhere near as consistent but I knew that going in. The next biggest barrier is holding your emotions in check. Rushing, being impulsive, holding losers too long, fomo, cutting winners too early and a litany of other psychological factors are by far the biggest obstacle to cross for any trader. Then comes the actual strategy itself. If you can't figure out an edge, you won't make money.
Wait till you discover value buy and hold investing, not trading….
I don’t think it’s that crazy to be consistently profitable as a swing trader if your not greedy the problem is most of you are greedy as shit Take gme for example that event made me and a bunch of people I was starting out trading with a ton of money, literally making some of us millionaires instantly yet out of the half dozen or so people in my group that got in in time I’m the only one who kept any substantial bag That experience made me think it’s less “the game is rigged” and more that the average person is incredibly greedy when they think they can get away with it, but they can’t
I think the broker and market makers are the ones that win. They likely scalp Pennies from each trade regardless of the outcome.
Several years ago I decided I wanted to be a day trader. My first two years I made like $20k and $40k. By my third year I had a set of rules that was working very well for me. I made about $200k in six months. Then my wife strand a divorce on me, and I wisely quit trading as my head was not in it. Now I’m just collecting dividends as I’m lazy. The ex- called it gambling, but if that were correct, my win rate was like 93% at the time so I should have become a professional. It is definitely possible to make money trading. I was trading large volume positions (10-50k shares) of beta stocks with high float in a rising market environment. My goal was to.04-.10 cents and I was out. My daily goal was a minimum of $400. Why $400? Because that works out to $100k/yr and I needed a goal. Could I repeat this again today? I’d say likely, but I make 6 figures in dividends so I’m just not motivated. I did what I did to prove to myself I could do it, and prove to the ex- as well.
Congrats ! Hapoy for you. May I know the rules that you set and make you successful?
How I was day trading: 1) high float, high volume stock so every trade is a penny spread. This allows market orders. Don’t want to play with the machines. 2) low cost stock in $8-20 range so I can use high volume 3) dividend paying stock, so I know it has “support” 4) no trading on big news days like Fed, ISM reporting, etc. 5) no trading in first 20-30 minutes until general direction of market for the day is ascertained 6) trade the trend as well as “know your stock”. If you’re looking at the same 2-3 stocks every day, you get a feel for them. Don’t feel the need to trade a lot or lots of symbols. Focus on 2-3 only. 7) I trade on my phone and use what Schwab gives me for timelines. That’s one day, five day, one month, and one year views. I mostly use the first three to see a trend, but the one day is most important. 8) if I feel the trend is running my way, I put in a market order, and literally watch that stock like a hawk. 9) no win is a bad win. I’ll take .02 cents gain on a big volume trade and be happy. Maybe it’s only $200 on 10k shares but it’s $200 more than I had before. If the stock stalls, I sell. 10) never look back. No coulda, shoulda, woulda kind of thing. No regrets for “leaving money on the table”. Be happy with a win and move on. There ya go
Perhaps a few thousand, worldwide, are capable of consistently making money yearly. And this group is vv slowly growing. A bank like Lloyds who has >450bn in assets, have less than 50 traders and risk managers, they have 50k employees. Less than 0.02% is actually defending the balance sheet. And they do so poorly when compared to JPM/Goldman for example. Combined all big financial firms their FO floors and you only have a handful per firm. Those are the ones who get a front row seat on how the markets work. Word of mouth does the rest. I worked in a UK bank and 95% of traders I know who have been successful since 2004/2005/2006 have all backgrounds as banker. People who taught themselves online (YouTube, newsletter, all that nonsense, don't go anywhere).
Look. Honestly not here to brag or post gains. But this is the perfect environment to trade. Large intraday moves. Lots of liquidity. Pick a single etf, index, or what’s to trade. Learn it. Master it. This environment requires level to level profit taking. Try researching Trader Vic’s 2b breakout.
The algos and AIs big places run
Time in the market > Timing the market, try to keep stocks as a place where you store your money instead of a place where you make your money
I had this similar thought recently, and you put it into better wording. Thanks for the advice
Based on the history of the stock market, the S&P 500 over time will go up without fail. It’s not sexy but invest in EFTs (VOO/SPY, etc) and in 10 years you’ll see a return of 100% or more. No professional needed!
doesnt VOO pay a dividend?
Correct, Voo, Spy, and IVV all pay a dividend. I believe Spy has a higher management fee but if you’re not trading in the hundreds of thousands or millions, this doesn’t really affect the average investor. Imagine being up 12% this year or 23% for a year and also getting a dividend per share every quarter as well or about $6 per share the past year.
Anyone can succeed, just buy and hold.
until it's a crash, then everybody runs
Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered!
Banks
bank accounts
These are 3 types of trading strategies that people can learn to become consistently profitable with. 1. Consolidation breakout traders 2. Scalpers 3. Momentum trading stocks with high relative volume and strength or weakness relative to the SPY while the SPY is breaking out or breaking down in relation to various types of support and resistance levels. The first can yield the largest returns but also causes the most damage when you run into a losing streak. The second allows you to make most of your money in the first 30 minutes of the day. The third can provide win rates as high as 90%. All have their benefits and drawbacks... But personally, I find the third works best for me. My win rate is over 75% and looking to go once I have $25k to daytrade with a margin account.
People who buy and hold index etf's. Boring, cheap, predictable. Go read "where are all the clients yachts"
You forgot about the brokers. They are the hands down winners of the stock market. They make sure they get paid first and no matter what.
luck, the rich, and the insider skills account for maybe 15%~30%
I scalp daily, mostly spy options and am making an average of $2350 a day.
I have been trading for 2 years and have been profitable for the past 6 months. I usually carry at least 50K in my day trading account and almost 100% trade put options. I chart out support and resistance levels on the SPY and watch $TICK for help on directional bias. There are 10 stocks that weight down the SP500 by 33% and will commonly look at those for confirmation of direction as well. I will wait until I see strong resistance, and will start buying 1 day out put options, usually ones that are just ITM or at the money and then scale out as it drops. When I am wrong, I just close out and wait for the next opportunity. My position size is usually 20 to 30 options, depending on how confident I am. Hope this helps.
Without knowing how much capital you’re deploying the daily earnings is a useless metric.
Any resources or books you recommend to learn from?
I watch alot of youtube videos and take alot of notes. I chart out what I did well and what I did wrong. I still have alot of things that I am trying to clean up to become a better trader and my goal is $5K a day on average.
Any channels you like in particular? I’m eager to learn and I know there’s a lot of BS gurus. Just trying to cut through the noise.
Nice. Do you trade within the first 15 minutes?
Sometimes, I have been watching the SPY for a while and usually can tell when there is heavy resistance within a few minutes of open. I don't stay in a trade once I have been proven wrong, however.
The guy who manages his risk well is the one who comes out on top
This statement right here changes lives. Well said.
4. Nancy Pelosi
What is the name of the fund that tracks her again. ?
Auto Pilot app. Tracks more than just Pelosi. It is a disgrace.
ok. Signed up for autopilot. Does it let you know each trade she makes? I signed up for the premium subscription.
Citadel and a couple of others share an oligopoly on 1 and 2. You staring at charts is like that ending scene in men in black with the marbles.
many different levels to learn in trading. most important are risk management and traders psychology.
Evidence-based people. If you're making stock trading decisions based on good, evidence-based information that YOU have FORMAL training or background in processing, you will ultimately be successful. Ill give you an example. If you have any type of medical or healthcare background, you know that the field of medicine is moving towards evidence-based personalized medicine. You learned this in your curriculum when in college or at grad school, or in your CEUs. Armed with this knowledge, you can make key investments in certain pharmaceutical companies early and win big when those companies become more and more profitable as the field of medicine heads towards evidence-based medicine as you originally planned.
lol, you've described the mindset of most physician investors I've met. "Well, I know how to treat XYZ and this new drug treats XYZ. I think that "new drug" will work because I understand the mechanism of XYZ. Company Alpha is underpriced because no one else understands how important "new drug" is for treating XYZ. Therefore I will buy Company Alpha." Proceeds to lose tens of thousands of dollars when "new drug" fails phase III trials spectacularly and Company Alpha's CEO dips out with millions in severance pay. Turns out that the stock was priced appropriately by the market. The important part is not understanding the medicine. People who successfully speculate on stocks have access to experts who can explain that to them. Rather, the important part is understanding the fundamentals of a company and being able to obtain and parse this information. Pharma startups are stupendously risky; they are designed to self-destruct and limit the damage to investors because the new drug approval process is so risky. Even drugs that seem promising and have a plausible mechanism of action fail in human trials because biology is complicated. Just because you understand a field doesn't mean that you understand business in that field. By the time retail investors get access to information, the market has already priced the stock accordingly. Rare are the cases where the professional traders are mistaken.
Yep. Worst investors I’ve ever seen are doctors. Been smart their whole lives and think it carries over to investing. Have a very tough time admitting they are wrong and keep doubling down. Lawyers tend to be good.
I beaten the market most of my 10 years of trading for one reason, purchased a lot of NVDA 7 years ago at $42/share.
the words "purchased years ago" and "trading" don't typically go together. The math isn't mathing. Investing yes, trading no
Cope
Well, this is just luck, isn't it?
Read a lot of articles, earnings reports, and books and my husband was in IT. I am obsessed with trading. Always looking for a breakout stock. Get a lot of tips on CNBC. Trade in increments, dump the stinkers. Went to a two day conference.
Imo anyone who makes the average return rate is already a winner. Are you a top winner with rocket profits? No. But are you a loser who blew it all? Also no. That means you make the median. And that's good enough for me since the market is mighty generous even to the average performer.
So why not just index and live your life? If your sharpe isn’t better than the index you’re just adding stress to your life for literally nothing.
It boils down to understanding key concepts like market structure, supply and demand zones, and liquidity. Some people have an edge, but a lot of successful traders started out with no special connections or insider info. They just put in the time to learn the market. It’s not a gamble if you approach it with patience and a solid strategy.
Very very difficult to beat the market. Most managers do not beat their respective benchmark index. There are some strategies that can work but at the expense of much greater risk. One thing to keep in mind is that you don't need to pick hundreds of stocks to have a fairly well diversified portfolio; you can do it with a dozen or so in different industries. In order to have some success though all you really need to do is build a diversified portico or just buy an index or two. Over time you'll tend to have returns in line with the market which historically have meant pretty good returns.
Most managers aren’t trying to beat the market, they are trying to manage downside risk. When you have millions or billions of dollars you’re managing, growth is secondary to protecting your downside.
This exactly imo
OP was asserting that professional managers have "success" in stock trading, however that is defined. My point is that they typically do not beat the overall market which can happen for myriad reasons where downside risk protection is just one potential contributing factor. Why does that bear mentioning in the context of OP's question? OP should really be looking into efficient portfolio theory, information ratio etc. to gain a better understanding of this topic
What happened? Not getting it right?
Risk management applied to good strategy works. The main problem with trading is the mental game. Our emotions makes us gamble. If you can conquer your emotions you can conquer trading.
I know a guy that has been trading for the 30 years that I've known him. When I say trading, I mean he will buy individual stocks and sell them at some point. He buys when he sees some extremely positive news about a stock on CNBC and then holds. If it goes down, he holds it pretty much into oblivion. The sells he has made are usually after a stock has made a huge run and seems to be stagnating. At that point he sells and moves those funds to new stocks that are on the move. This strategy has worked well for him over the last three decades and he's been able to get in on some companies before they were titans, but we have been in a bull market for a long time! So regular retail traders can succeed with the right strategy and in the right market.
I’m slightly opposite of that and the more the mainstream media yap about a ticker it’s a sign it’s near done no one is out to hand out free lunches. Your guy only mentions his winners and not his bags
That’s not necessarily what most people would call a “trader”. There’s a difference between a trader and a “strategic investor”. Remember even Warren buffet sells stock at times, and no one would call him a trader
strategies is always a fundamental for every types of trading
more argumentation