FreeMarkets (99.76)

Trigger Happy Day Trader

June 04, 2010 – Comments (1) | RELATED TICKERS: FAS , ARST.DL , SRS

Just for fun, and with only some extra fun money, I tried my hand at day trading.  I figured with the recent volatility I could make a few bucks - both short and long term.

If I'm anything like the average day trader - you're never getting rich.  And I don't mean you won't get rich because you lose money, I mean you won't get rich even if you MAKE money.

I began playing with $10,000.  I bought and sold volatile 2x, 3x ETFs (FAZ, FAS, SRS, UCO, etc) and also some small cap stocks (HEAT, GY, ARST).  Here is one example - which I repeated OVER and OVER again for about 10 days (about 500 trades).  I saw a down trend so I bought SRS @ $27.15, it went to $27.40 and then started back down, by the time it hit $27.25, I sold and made around $25.  I then watched it go back over $28, but I was now into something else.

Over and over again, if the stock/ETF began to move opposite my bet I would either A) Sell with some profit for fear the market would move quickly against my position, or B) If it went opposite my bet at the beginiing I would wait until it reversed and I was profitable - then I'd take my $20 profit.

So I spent two weeks of my vacation day trading.  I was glued to the computer.  I turned $10,000 into $11,300 during some very volatile trading days (you can't make much in non-volatile markets).  That's $650/week.  Every minute was stressful.  I was constantly worried about losing it all (even though it was fun money). I've had terrible bosses who couldn't stress me out anywhere NEAR how I felt playing the day trading game.

I'm keeping my day job and INVESTING, not trading!