To Trade or Invest? Who's making money?

[Kelfinity]

Hi guys,

 

Just wana have a rough sense who are the traders and who are the investors in this forum. Maybe we can share knowledge with one another to make more money.

 

 

Also, who's still making good money from the stock market? I incurred a bad loss recently. Maybe I should just convert to investment than trading...

 

[Throttle2]

are you asking who is gambling and who is not?

 

long term investing is dead lah...

 

 

everyone is both an investor and trader

[Topgun]

Thinking of going into fx trading. Don't know how to start. Not sure if those courses advertised are useful (besides being expensive) with testimonials of how quickly money made by new students with as little as 1k.

 

If got cash, can pick up undervalued stocks and make money if not greedy.

 

Of course hear of stories of a lot of traders losing money but also some who can actually make a good living ESPECIALLY when times are bad and stock prices are very volatile.

 

Any traders here who can provide some gems of advice? Share some 1st hand account of success?

 

 

Edited January 29, 2009 by Topgun

[Kelfinity]

I guess there has to be a stronger inclination to either method of playing stocks. Trading is usually short term, contra, intraday. Investment is deem more long term, years...

 

Market is always there but which is a more proven method of making money? If we follow buffett's method, we should invest long term and not trade short term?

 

For me, everytime i make a certain amount, I will only lose it all in a matter of time. Maybe I should attend some greed curbing courses hahaha.

[Genie47]

Trading incurs costs.

 

Investments on the other hand seeks to squash down costs due to purchases of financial instruments.

[Throttle2]

Thinking of going into fx trading. Don't know how to start. Not sure if those courses advertised are useful (besides being expensive) with testimonials of how quickly money made by new students with as little as 1k.

 

If got cash, can pick up undervalued stocks and make money if not greedy.

 

Of course hear of stories of a lot of traders losing money but also some who can actually make a good living ESPECIALLY when times are bad and stock prices are very volatile.

 

Any traders here who can provide some gems of advice? Share some 1st hand account of success?

 

 

 

 

risky stuff

[Jeo01]

Can try channel news asia forum on trading

[Picanto]

Hi guys,

 

Just wana have a rough sense who are the traders and who are the investors in this forum. Maybe we can share knowledge with one another to make more money.

 

 

Also, who's still making good money from the stock market? I incurred a bad loss recently. Maybe I should just convert to investment than trading...

 

not important who is making money. keep the money in the bank safest. forget about the theory about inflation eating into savings etc. many investors believe in this theory and in the end what is the result??

 

[Speedsun]

Trading involves mehods of analysing charts and technical indicators to determine buy and sell signals. To win, must have discipline to cut losses is the first rule. According to what I learnt is out of 3 trades, 2 trades will make losses and 1 trade will make profit. The profit is able to cover the little losses that you made. What I mentioned is easy, no discipline to cut losses and greed always cause the downfall of traders.

[Altivo]

FX Trading is risky..... as basically, you're just betting on the exchange rates of the currencies to either go up or down in your favour. However, there are lotsa factors influencing this eg: geo-politics, the country's monetary policies, liquiditity of that currency etc.

 

Unless you can have access to this information, otherwise, FX trading is simply gambling.

[Genie47]

This is not theory it is correct. Inflation will eat into your cash.

 

The reason why the investors got into trouble is because they did not assess their own ability to take risk. When it comes to investing, it is all about risk appetite.

[Cheepo]

Trading or investing, it is easy to make a loss. Everyone says "buy low sell high". The reality is that most of us bought high, got stuck, then eventually sell to cut further losses. Then we stay away for sometime, then repeat the whole cycle again.

 

I am one of those idiots, barring the few times I got lucky.

[Limws1]

Thinking of going into fx trading. Don't know how to start. Not sure if those courses advertised are useful (besides being expensive) with testimonials of how quickly money made by new students with as little as 1k.

 

If got cash, can pick up undervalued stocks and make money if not greedy.

 

Of course hear of stories of a lot of traders losing money but also some who can actually make a good living ESPECIALLY when times are bad and stock prices are very volatile.

 

Any traders here who can provide some gems of advice? Share some 1st hand account of success?

 

 

 

I have just started forex trading not long ago. In any trading be it forex, stock, or option, there will always be a disclaimer stated by the brokage company. "Trading is not for everyone". To be successful at trading, the first thought you have should not be making huge amount of money. Trading skills take time to learn, at least a year. Most importantly, it is not the skills but the ability to impose self-control that will make or break a trader.

 

Forex trading is not investment. I prefer to call it speculating, but the word gambling comes close. This is because no forex traders even the professional knows all the events that can move the forex market. So it is impossible to plan for all events. Once a you enter into a trade, your trade will be subjected to all events and other traders sentiment. So it is a hit or miss thing. But with proper risk and money management, even losing 50% of your trade, you can still be profitable.

 

 

 

 

 

[Drive_carcar]

I agree, FX trading is pretty much a gamble. And it is a game where the odds are stacked up against you the very beginning.

 

Besides the spread - the diff between the bid and ask price, there's also slippage. Slippage is where the brokers makan you, and this can be very significant. It happens at volitile times, and you end up paying a higher price than the market's current rate when you buy, and then selling at a lower price than the current market rate dictates. To make it worst, some brokerage houses actually have their own floor traders that trades against you. Brokerage houses are not charities, their money comes from the spread, as well as chipping of unsuspecting traders.

 

The regards to making trade, in short there's no reliable way to predict the market's direction. You might as well flip a coin as technical indicators, fundamental indicators can never really help you to predict the direction. And anyway, even if you eventually got the direction correct, you could end up getting stopped out because the market is volitility just wipe you out before it regains again.

 

In short, stay away unless you got balls of steel and money to burn. You can make a good living, but first you have to learn how to loose. If taking out $500, and set it on fire gives you the "ouch", then it's not your game yet.

[Drive_carcar]

Can PM me your brokerage company?

[Throttle2]

so many internet trading houses out there.

 

Saxo is quite popular. online trading platform.

 

As for me, I dealt with Banks but at the end of the day, it's just for kicks.

A few grand profit or loss versus the effort doesnt make a diff to the whole picture so gave up.

 

Want to make money? work .

 

 

[Starry]

Thinking of going into fx trading. Don't know how to start. Not sure if those courses advertised are useful (besides being expensive) with testimonials of how quickly money made by new students with as little as 1k.

 

If got cash, can pick up undervalued stocks and make money if not greedy.

 

Of course hear of stories of a lot of traders losing money but also some who can actually make a good living ESPECIALLY when times are bad and stock prices are very volatile.

 

Any traders here who can provide some gems of advice? Share some 1st hand account of success?

 

 

 

 

Ok...let me share with you a bit on Fx trading since you are interested. It is true that Fx trading can be very profitable, far more than stocks and all. But only 5-10% of all forex traders survived. It is not an easy game because you are against all the global banks and financial institutions who trade trillions (fx market is in trillions everyday) in this market. These are the real pros.....unlike the stock market which consist of a lot of everyday people as well.

 

However, having said that, the forex market is super huge and open 24 hours and hence very little chance for gaps and manipulation. This make the usage of technical analysis critical and is mainly the tool used to trade this market. So your TA has to be tip top.

 

To survive the forex market, besides having a system(which you can pay money and learn from anywhere), you need to be really emotionless, discipline and realistic. Trading is a hard job. I am not kidding. I do part time trading on the forex market in the past, and I wake up every morning at 6am without fail just to check for setups and entries before my broker closes the daily bar (they closes the daily bar at 7am Singapore time. For part time, you would trade the daily chart). This one hour in the morning is just the checking of setups. How about the time for planning the entries the night before? It's a lot of work.....and sometimes it is really straining. Furthermore, sometimes even with all the work, you don't even get one setup that you like.

 

On top of that, you need to be realistic on money management. You can start with $500 if you want, and you can survive provided you stick to your money management plan. Thesedays, brokers offer micro-accounts (1 pip=1 cent) and there is no excuse not to use the lowest risk possible if your account is small. In the stock market, $500 can't even get you started unless you go for penny stocks. So money management is crucial and in my opinion, poor money management is what killed most traders and it is not that their system is poor. Of course the other thing is emotion. You need to be dead cool to trade this market. Normally if your money management is sound, you should be quite cool even you had a string of losing trades.

 

I can talk about this market the whole day. PM me if you want to know more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Topgun]

Thanks Starry for the quick take on fx trading. Appreciate your taking the time!

 

To be honest, I never thought about fx trading until recently I met a friend who's interested in doing this and he convinced me over one whole morning (and a few coffees) to also look into it. He's got a friend who's doing this full time for 2 years and apparently do well enough to put food on the table and support the family.

 

... You can start with $500 if you want, and you can survive provided you stick to your money management plan. Thesedays, brokers offer micro-accounts (1 pip=1 cent) and there is no excuse not to use the lowest risk possible if your account is small. In the stock market, $500 can't even get you started unless you go for penny stocks. So money management is crucial and in my opinion, poor money management is what killed most traders and it is not that their system is poor. Of course the other thing is emotion. You need to be dead cool to trade this market. Normally if your money management is sound, you should be quite cool even you had a string of losing trades.

 

This is exactly what I'm thinking. Startup capital is small and I know I'd need to be realistic. To play in the stock market, large amount and holding power are required, both of which I cannot afford at this point in time.

 

I'll take this offline and PM you soon ;-) Many thanks!

 

 

 

Apologies to the TS that I hijacked his thread. Sorry.

 

 

Edited January 29, 2009 by Topgun