91–100 of 263 posts
How can you do your taxes if your trades are not executed?
You use the numbers provided by your broker at the end of the year.
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.…
I can't perfectly read 5 minutes into the future, nor is it necessary. All that is necessary is to have a slight edge. Just like running a casino, a small statistical edge is enough assurance that any individual game outcome doesn't matter because you will have more wins than losses. And a tiny edge is not hard to do.
I'm doing fine without news feeds at all. An economic calendar and some basic technical analysis is sufficient enough of an edge to win more than I lose.
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…
You are being cocky because you are dabbling with small money, when you play with big money, your emotions will immediate change and that is when you will make mistakes.
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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…
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…
> I'm too conservative to bet the bank, but I haven't been wrong yet. You are being cocky because you are dabbling with small money, when you play with big money, your emotions will immediate change and that is when you will make mistakes.
That's precisely why I don't play with big money, not that I have so much anyway. I wonder though, if I was playing with someone else's "big money", if you could keep those emotions in check.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't believe it's possible to consistently make money ignoring "news, information, or fundamentals". Otherwise you're just fitting curves to noisy data. If it could work consistently, then you would be able to read the future.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
> 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. I can't perfectly read 5 minutes into the future, nor is it necessary. All that is necessary is to have a slig…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm too conservative to bet the bank, but I haven't been wrong yet. You are being cocky because you are dabbling with small money, when you play with big money, your emotions will immediate change and that is when you will make mistakes.
> when you play with big money, your emotions will immediate change and that is when you will make mistakes That's precisely why I don't play with big money, not that I have so much anyway. I wonder though, if I was playing with someone else's "big money", if you could keep those emotions in check.
Seems to be the way all hedge funds operate, maybe can even charge membership fees too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> when you play with big money, your emotions will immediate change and that is when you will make mistakes That's precisely why I don't play with big money, not that I have so much anyway. I wonder though, if I was playing with someone else's "big money", if you could keep those emotions in check.
That’s the real trick - convince others to give you a lot of money and when you win you get a big cut and when you lose it’s not your money and you just do something else. Seems to be the way all hedge funds operate, maybe can even charge membership fees too.