Day trading stocks: waste of time and money?

[Chris Scoreboard Johnston]

Chris Johnston

Good posts on this subject. The most difficult aspect of being a professional trader is that no matter how good you are, you never know when your money will come in. Even my strategies which are proven to get 80% winning trades in terms of accuracy, can at times go a month or two actually losing money. As a result the cash flow at times is screwy. This is the main reason why many good traders manage money and write newsletters, to smooth out the cash flow. I have no great desire to deal with the public in terms of money due to the annoying phone calls about why did we do this or that etc.. as if they knew better. I had one guy who dumped me last year after we went over 6 months without a single losing trade in my bond trading service. I still wonder what his expectation was to this day. However, I do it again to help smooth out cash flow.

Last year, even though I had a 60% gain in most of my accounts for the year, I had one month where I lost over 100k. This as a percentage of my trading accounts is not that big, but it is still alot in gross dollars when bill paying time comes up.

I urge most people if they want to get serious about trading to stay away from the Nintendo stuff ( day trading ). There are many ways to skin the cat, but alot of them were formulated during unbalanced market conditions and as a result, do not work as well most of the time, as they did when they were conceived.

Rseiser, it is hard to model short trading systems that consistently make money. The reason is that there is a huge upward long term bias in the market. It is a better strategy for the average person, to go to cash during bad periods, then re-enter on the long side when conditions are better. I have a few, but it has taken many many years to refine them to the point where they work well. I know you are very bearish about stocks and RE in general, but you can see the problem in the last 6 months with trying to short what you think is a market that should come down in your analysis. You are fighting a huge trend, and that is always tough.

[Chris Scoreboard Johnston]

Chris Johnston

Good posts on this subject. The most difficult aspect of being a professional trader is that no matter how good you are, you never know when your money will come in. Even my strategies which are proven to get 80% winning trades in terms of accuracy, can at times go a month or two actually losing money. As a result the cash flow at times is screwy. This is the main reason why many good traders manage money and write newsletters, to smooth out the cash flow. I have no great desire to deal with the public in terms of money due to the annoying phone calls about why did we do this or that etc.. as if they knew better. I had one guy who dumped me last year after we went over 6 months without a single losing trade in my bond trading service. I still wonder what his expectation was to this day. However, I do it again to help smooth out cash flow.

Last year, even though I had a 60% gain in most of my accounts for the year, I had one month where I lost over 100k. This as a percentage of my trading accounts is not that big, but it is still alot in gross dollars when bill paying time comes up.

I urge most people if they want to get serious about trading to stay away from the Nintendo stuff ( day trading ). There are many ways to skin the cat, but alot of them were formulated during unbalanced market conditions and as a result, do not work as well most of the time, as they did when they were conceived.

Rseiser, it is hard to model short trading systems that consistently make money. The reason is that there is a huge upward long term bias in the market. It is a better strategy for the average person, to go to cash during bad periods, then re-enter on the long side when conditions are better. I have a few, but it has taken many many years to refine them to the point where they work well. I know you are very bearish about stocks and RE in general, but you can see the problem in the last 6 months with trying to short what you think is a market that should come down in your analysis. You are fighting a huge trend, and that is always tough.

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