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Strategies & Market Trends : ahhaha's ahs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (5237)	8/13/2002 2:04:13 AM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24758

And I am quite certain that the longevity on SI has nothing to do with whether one is read by others or not. True. But since I've not known you to make harsh statements about people without being in possession of the facts I was a bit surprised by that last question. I was serious when I said, I didn't even know where to begin answering it. It sort of assumes there are only two ways to go....you either trade in and out of stocks rapidly or buy and hold 'em dollar cost averaging in like your example of what the first year broker might suggest. Its like in the old West stories where they say, "Yer either fer us or agin us." Well its a bit more complicated than all that if you want a superior return. Money put in stocks is risk capital and I, for one, expect to get compensated sufficiently for that risk. I'm not interested in getting a long term treasury rate when I buy and sell a stock. That's what you'd get with indexing or averaging or any of these other schemes handed out to investors that find their way into a broker's office. The risk is minimized but then so is the return. What they count on is that the individual investor has a very long time frame and eventually the time value of money and compounding will bail out the effects of poor timing. The lesson of a protracted downside is not for investors to turn into traders or turn into short sellers, the lesson is one of capital preservation and proper assessment of risk/reward. The reason you trade is because you seek to avoid risk, but in order to get the greatest returns you have to engage it.

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (5237)	8/13/2002 2:46:06 AM
From: ahhaha	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24758

Chortle, you don't know squat. You're a hack amateur. I'm a pro and have been for decades. I was an MM on the PSEO floor in 1974. I've worn many hats in Wall Street before and since. I did my first trade in the early '60s. With respect to trading I'm telling you that you have NO CHANCE. And don't give me this bullshit about your 2% profits. Let me make something clear to you as a PRO. None of the floor pros can succeed at what you're trying to do. The ones that think they can don't last. They wash out. In order to survive there you have to do what you don't want to do most of the time. You have to get on the other side of the public action. That means you have to buy when the market is plunging. Hell, bud, you can't even do that now when it's imperative that you do. As soon as you buy you have to sell against the position to go delta neutral. Then you have to maintain that state. You find you're nothing but a mule responding like a machine to random inputs in mechanical fashion over which you have no control. If you don't do this, you get cleaned. Do you think you are more clever than a mule? On the public side the road to ruin is faster because the negative expected return is greater. At least on the floor you're near and you can broker positions or jockey the public action, or even hide from the annunciator in the bathroom. You also have a short haircut that gives you ability to hedge away errors which you don't have on the outside. The only chance to survive from public side is to convert the a priori negative return of trading into an a priori positive return of holding. Holding engages risk, but traders avoid risk, so traders end up avoiding return and keep profits. What you're doing follows a traditional path. You may have just enough luck to fool yourself that you'll end up ahead. You're better off in Beggas. If you don't like the market, then pull out and stay away until a time comes that will support rational holding.