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Non-Tech : MB TRADING -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TraderAlan who wrote (1017)	9/6/1998 11:36:00 AM
From: Gary Korn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7382

If I may be bold, what do you find to trade 20-25/times a day? I know the scalpers can do it (and a few do it well) but the more I trade, the less profitable I get. Alan, Not bold at all. On Friday, I traded INTC about 10 times, CSCO about 10 times and PSFT 1 time. I'm doing this while on the telephone with a trader at Fidelity Spartan (so I really need MBT). At least I have a realtime data feed from Signal Online. An example of a trade: When I see the bid build up on INTC, I execute a buy on 500 shares. If the bid volume evaporates, I IMMEDIATELY sell. If the bid builds or holds, I add another 500 or just hold. On Friday, I think I lost $60 about 6 times on INTC trades where the bid evaporated and I then had to get out (my rule is to never, never, never wait for a rebound; just sell immediately). However, on the 4 INTC trades where the bid stayed steady or built up, I made about $200 each. (My 9/4 day trading net was about $800, half on INTC and half on CSCO). I've been doing this for 31 trading days now, for just about 1 hour per day, and even with the learning curve period built into that (and I'm still learning), and the market collapse on the 28th and 31st, I'm averaging a whopping gain of $120/day (net of commissions, fees, etc.). One learning curve example was DELL: Great for day trading, but not through Fido, because they don't make a market in it. On the 31st, I got nailed for a $4000 loss (though I'm still up 120/day), because the MM on DELL did not promptly report my position. That killed me, because I could not sell till I knew where I stood, and the few minutes between execute and confirm meant $4000 bucks). Now, I only trade stocks in which I'm highly likely to get a rapid report. I'm told that DLJ makes a market in DELL, so if I had an account at DLJ I would trade DELL, but I don't. Very often, I see a trade, but can't get through to Fidelity (but am on hold for 5 minutes). By then, the trade is long gone. (Of course, 60% of those trades I saw would have been losers anyway, but I should have more than made up for them on the good 40%). This is where I think a place like MBT will help, for then I can trade when I want. Gary Korn