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Don't Steal Money from Day Traders Before They Lose It

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Re: Don't Steal Money from Day Traders Before They Lose It

#81

How much do you want to make per year? How much do you want to start with? What kind of return do you want each year on the initial investment? Believe it. I do make it consistently.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17931637 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Don't Steal Money from Day Traders Before They Lose It

#82
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would happily make money for n-years and lose for one, provided the amount lost was a fraction of what I earned.

> I would happily make money for n-years and lose for one, provided the amount lost was a fraction of what I earned. Your caveat there often swallows the rule. Many bet on the market and make big bucks only to lose multiples of it later.

Yeah irresponsible people do. But it's not necessary to bet the farm to make a living. Although it's certainly easier to eke a living off a $600k bankroll than a $50k

Re: Don't Steal Money from Day Traders Before They Lose It

#83
post #32
post #25

I was a trader at a big bank for many years. The tools and access I had there put me in a different class of trader that very few other firms or individuals can attain. There is such information and technology asymmetry in this business - its not worth trying to day trade as an individual. Buy and hold forever... only way to invest.

I find it hard to believe there’s any day trader using any kind of information making a consistent profit. Isn’t everybody just dabbling around hoping to be in the 50% that outperform by chance? i’ve read about ed thorp pioneering statistical arbitrage in the 80s (?) which would fit the bill of “consistent returns”, but I doubt that there is any of that left close to 50 years later. I’m wondering what all these quant…

The only way you can consistently make money is by knowing things others do not (e.g., insider trading) or by taking advantage of structural problems or inefficiencies in the trading platform (e.g., high frequency trading).

I do believe that insider trading is rampant. I've seen many occasions where a large corporate announcement sends a stock up or down, but hours before, you can see the price of the stock slowly slide in the direction. Obviously a certain amount of that may be random/explainable, but I've seen it a lot and my intuition says more is going on. This also seems relatively easy to quantitatively measure, I'd love to see a real analysis of it.

Re: Don't Steal Money from Day Traders Before They Lose It

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must not be considering the total return of all your wealth just a limited subset. If you started with 10k and earned 300% (138.6% continuously compounded) then after 5 years you will have over $10mm. Wait another 3.3 years and you're a billionaire...

I was simply stating I have a substantially higher return than the pros. I've used that money for other purposes. for instance buying American airlines the day they went bankrupt allowed me to pay off a medical bill for a surprise medical emergency. But in that case it was literally 1000 percent return. I bought a bit of their stock the morning they went bankrupt. AMD is also an incredibly easy one to profit one. Wal…

>for instance buying American airlines the day they went bankrupt allowed me to pay off a medical bill for a surprise medical emergency.

Good job, you got into the same short-squeeze opportunity everybody else did that morning.

Re: Don't Steal Money from Day Traders Before They Lose It

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice. You know the market has been in a historic long bull run these past 9 or so years, right?

I trade futures and currencies. Short positions happen about as frequently as long positions. My average trade lasts less than 5 minutes. Macro trends don't really affect my strategy outside of the fact that I tend to watch Fed and ECB news announcements as a way of predicting short term volatility.

If your average trade lasts less than 5 minutes, then you can conceivably make money only if you can read 5 minutes into the future (not currently possible), or have tools that allow you get news/information faster than everyone else, analyze that information, and act on it, 5 minutes before everyone else.

Today, it's extremely difficult to get information 5 minutes sooner than everyone else without insider trading. Also, doing such quick analysis can be pretty error-prone, it's not uncommon that bad stories send a stock up and good stories send it down because the price is based on the perception rather than the fundamentals. So even if you have the right information, you may make the wrong bet. I'm sure some are better than others at this, but to make money, you'll need to be better than 50% of everyone else.

Re: Don't Steal Money from Day Traders Before They Lose It

#86
I don't day trade, I mostly keep my money in ETFs and other dumb securities. But every now and again, I see the market move in such a completely unreasonable way, most often hammering a stock on some bad, but not awful news. In these cases, I've made small gambles and bought the stock when it's low to see it recover every time. My sample size is small and I'm too conservative to bet the bank, but I haven't been wrong yet.

Re: Don't Steal Money from Day Traders Before They Lose It

#87
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would happily make money for n-years and lose for one, provided the amount lost was a fraction of what I earned. Your caveat there often swallows the rule. Many bet on the market and make big bucks only to lose multiples of it later.

Yeah irresponsible people do. But it's not necessary to bet the farm to make a living. Although it's certainly easier to eke a living off a $600k bankroll than a $50k

Many hedge funds and active traders do this every day. Maybe they're irresponsible, but they're the norm.

Re: Don't Steal Money from Day Traders Before They Lose It

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I trade futures and currencies. Short positions happen about as frequently as long positions. My average trade lasts less than 5 minutes. Macro trends don't really affect my strategy outside of the fact that I tend to watch Fed and ECB news announcements as a way of predicting short term volatility.

If your average trade lasts less than 5 minutes, then you can conceivably make money only if you can read 5 minutes into the future (not currently possible), or have tools that allow you get news/information faster than everyone else, analyze that information, and act on it, 5 minutes before everyone else. Today, it's extremely difficult to get information 5 minutes sooner than everyone else without insider trading.…

Today, it's extremely difficult to get information 5 minutes sooner than everyone else without insider trading.

You're assuming parent is trading on news, information, or fundamentals. A technical trader wouldn't care about anything you've mentioned.

Re: Don't Steal Money from Day Traders Before They Lose It

#89
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard to believe there’s any day trader using any kind of information making a consistent profit. Isn’t everybody just dabbling around hoping to be in the 50% that outperform by chance? i’ve read about ed thorp pioneering statistical arbitrage in the 80s (?) which would fit the bill of “consistent returns”, but I doubt that there is any of that left close to 50 years later. I’m wondering what all these quant…

The only way you can consistently make money is by knowing things others do not (e.g., insider trading) or by taking advantage of structural problems or inefficiencies in the trading platform (e.g., high frequency trading). I do believe that insider trading is rampant. I've seen many occasions where a large corporate announcement sends a stock up or down, but hours before, you can see the price of the stock slowly sl…

Most people follow the community when they should be trying to be ahead of the community.

Re: Don't Steal Money from Day Traders Before They Lose It

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was simply stating I have a substantially higher return than the pros. I've used that money for other purposes. for instance buying American airlines the day they went bankrupt allowed me to pay off a medical bill for a surprise medical emergency. But in that case it was literally 1000 percent return. I bought a bit of their stock the morning they went bankrupt. AMD is also an incredibly easy one to profit one. Wal…

>for instance buying American airlines the day they went bankrupt allowed me to pay off a medical bill for a surprise medical emergency. Good job, you got into the same short-squeeze opportunity everybody else did that morning.

Be sarcastic, but quite a few pros claimed it was a terrible investment. Same thing has been happening with amd. It's incredibly low hanging fruit. I just wasn't able to or decided not to reinvent the profits. My original point stands, the pros are terrible at their job. If you can't beat the rate of inflation in a multi billion dollar fund get a new job, despite all the fancy pointless tech.
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