Comment by LouisSayers

Comment by LouisSayers 5 days ago

Stock trading can be quite lucrative if it's a good match. Have a look at Qullamaggie on YouTube.

> Edit, I say this as someone that has been learning to trade the last 6 months. To be completely transparent I've actually overall lost money doing this, but have also brought my account back up from having halved to almost break even a couple times now and can definitely see the possibility of doing very well. If I was better at following instructions I would 100% be profitable. The YouTuber I mentioned doesn't sell any courses.

> Edit 2, screw you guys for the downvotes. I'm sharing something I've found useful. You don't have to buy into the idea, but there are some people who do very well off of trading. Hence "if it's a match"

smileysteve 5 days ago

Stock "trading" is statistically against the odds. "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" was published nearly 50 years ago and remains generally true. No YouTuber or perfect instruction following would make you 100% likely to be profitable.

The most profitable (and effort efficient way) is to routinely invest in a broad basket of stocks over a long period. Ie Voo and Hold.

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stuffn 4 days ago

The EMH is provably false.
Moreover if you can get an edge that is even 2-3% over a coin flip all you need is risk management to make money.
Not understanding this is how you go broke. I traded for a number of years and did well. It was not hard to regularly beat the market, especially in futures and options.

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LouisSayers 5 days ago

Yes generally speaking, statistically most people will not beat the index.
Does it follow then that no-one is beating the index consistently?
Of course there are people who are not a statistic. Maybe not everyone is made for it, but that doesn't mean noone is out there beating the market.
Maybe its hard if you're a hedge fund, but I'm talking about individuals with relatively small accounts.

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brcmthrowaway 5 days ago

How about options trading?

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- LouisSayers 5 days ago
  
  I've seen people on tiktok that exclusively trade options. It's not something I've looked into but my take after 6 months is that you basically find an approach that works for you, whether that be trading stocks, commodities, options etc and the time-scale that you trade.
  Personally I like to do primarily tech stocks and mix it up doing swing trading (holding multiple days) with a bit of scalping as well (buy / sells over minutes).
  At first I lost a lot of money scalping but now I seem to have a much higher success rate - you start to notice certain patterns in the way stocks move if you watch the charts long enough, and I've been learning to have more conviction in my positions.
  
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  brcmthrowaway 5 days ago
  
  Maybe algotrading is the answer
  
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  LouisSayers 4 days ago
  
  Yes, I might consider doing this but need to consistently feel confident doing it manually first. I did set up a docker instance to connect to my broker, so perhaps a goal for this year!
  
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qnleigh 5 days ago

I'm not downvoting you, but I think you are probably getting downvoted because "Stock trading can be quite lucrative" is statistically just not true. Even professional financial advisors almost never beat the market [0]. Only hedge funds that pay for huge amounts of priveledged financial information do, and even then not always.

Here's a good video that makes a case for this. Even if you don't agree, you might find some of the points he makes interesting. But tl;dr, he argues that index funds basically always outperform other methods, so one should primarily invest in things like that.

[0] https://youtu.be/T71ibcZAX3I?si=5kEkLoUhHDkajlyy

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LouisSayers 5 days ago

Statistically speaking, we typically end up with a bell curve right?
So who's on the ends of the bell curve?

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- qnleigh 4 days ago
  
  No offense intended, just speaking by the numbers you shared above, but it sounds like you are at the lower end of the bell curve. Most day traders are, largely because they don't have access to priveledged information like the datasets that hedge funds buy. If they make better bets than you do, then they literally take your money. Those aren't good odds.
  
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  LouisSayers 3 days ago
  
  I'm at the lower end in the same way that a junior dev is at the lower end of the salary band. This is to be expected for anyone just starting out.
  You're assuming that you need privileged information that is not available, but what I'm trading is basically the big player moves - indicated by movement volume in a stock.
  You don't need all the info, there are emergent patterns that result for stocks that make big moves over time.
  Not every stock that matches one of these patterns will be a winner, but you can base a strategy around this that allows you to have enough success, especially when you combine this with other attributes of the stock (and market conditions) at the particular point in time.
  I'm openly aware that so far I'm in the negative. However most of this is due to me not having sold when instructed to (holding onto "favourite" stocks). Very close to break even currently, so no harm done after 6 months playing in the market.
  
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