Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GraceZ who wrote (136772)	12/2/2001 10:19:13 PM
From: LLCF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

<Interestingly enough, short term stock trading and roulette both have a negative expected return. > Theoretically.... although there are tons of hedgefunds, trading desks, and individual investment groups, and individuals that do great. Granted... their experienced. DAK

To: GraceZ who wrote (136772)	12/3/2001 9:53:40 AM
From: Tommaso	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

Short-term stock trading is not nearly as mush of a losing proposition as it used to be, because the "frictional costs" are much lower. If you can buy and sell $20,000 worth of stock at a total cost of $60 (or less) in commissions, your frictional cost is only .33 percent. For every bet on the roulette wheel, if both 0 and 00 are the house numbers, your frictional cost is over 5%, or fifteen times the cost of short term trading. When I first began investing, short-term trading was suicidal: I had to go to Merrill Lynch and pay them something like $80 to make a $3,000 investment, maybe even more. The only way to make real money was to hold for a couple of years, at least. Yet I still do very little short term trading unless I feel forced into it by sudden and unexpected gains that I do not believe to be sustainable. Right now, by far my largest holding (outside an IRA account) is USU, the nuclear fuel processing company, with a low P/E, a high dividend, a near-monopoly, and selling well below stated book value.