Daytrading bank stocks?

[Sam]

Anyone out there brave enough to daytrade BAC or C or the likes? With weekly fluctuations of 10% or more they look tempting. But, if history is any indication, as soon as I get in, it would stop fluctuating and go down like a rock.

Sam

 

[haha]

Anyone out there brave enough to daytrade BAC or C or the likes? With weekly fluctuations of 10% or more they look tempting. But, if history is any indication, as soon as I get in, it would stop fluctuating and go down like a rock.

Sam

Daytrading confuses me. Say a stock has 100% volatility most days. So what? You still have to buy it before it rises, and sell it before it falls. How would you know? I always figured that daytraders were just unemployed guys who didn't want to admit that they sat home and watched Oprah and Dr. Phil all afternoon.

Ha

 

[Sam]

Hey, I didn't say it's easy How do you know? You don't. It's just high-octane gambling. Unemployed guys? Isn't that the majority of members here?

Sam

 

[thefed]

My cousin just explained to me some grand scheme he's been doing....osmething about buying short etfs....but daytrading them essentially....who knows?

i just keep on buying blindly

 

[BunsGettingFirm]

Daytrading confuses me. Say a stock has 100% volatility most days. So what? You still have to buy it before it rises, and sell it before it falls. How would you know? I always figured that daytraders were just unemployed guys who didn't want to admit that they sat home and watched Oprah and Dr. Phil all afternoon.

Ha

No, it's more involved than that. You have to watch technical signals such as the flying sombrero or the trenching burrito.

 

[ERD50]

No, it's more involved than that. You have to watch technical signals such as the flying sombrero or the trenching burrito.

I think the sophisticated day traders wait for some guy named Elliot to wave at them

but it's not easy to count the waves, and people always seem to disagree on how many waves there were.

-ERD50

 

[JPatrick]

Anyone out there brave enough to daytrade BAC or C or the likes? With weekly fluctuations of 10% or more they look tempting. But, if history is any indication, as soon as I get in, it would stop fluctuating and go down like a rock.

Sam

This is a beautiful day traders market, but I would not use the bank stocks. They are just too crazy right now given that a news story seems to bubble up every 15 minutes or so that either lifts or crushes them.
Techs or oil are probably safer..All just MHO...Have fun!

 

[kumquat]

No, it's more involved than that. You have to watch technical signals such as the flying sombrero or the trenching burrito.

TA (no not T&A)

"Thousands of experts study overbought indicators, oversold
indicators, head-and-shoulder patterns, put-call ratios, the Fed's
policy on money supply, foreign investment, the movement of the
constellations through the heavens, and the moss on oak trees, and
they can't predict markets with any useful consistency, any more
than the gizzard squeezers could tell the Roman emperors when
the Huns would attack." - Peter Lynch

 

[OAG]

Good luck!

 

[ziggy29]

I'm starting to think there's no point in daytrading them. Just short the hell out of them and wait for them to go to zero -- then you never have to cover...

 

[Sam]

Hey, that's not a bad idea, ziggy29. So, wait until they swing up by 50% then short.

 

[BunsGettingFirm]

TA (no not T&A)

"Thousands of experts study overbought indicators, oversold
indicators, head-and-shoulder patterns, put-call ratios, the Fed's
policy on money supply, foreign investment, the movement of the
constellations through the heavens, and the moss on oak trees, and
they can't predict markets with any useful consistency, any more
than the gizzard squeezers could tell the Roman emperors when
the Huns would attack." - Peter Lynch

I took a class called trading simulations in which your final grade depended on how much you could clean your classmates' clocks. Wow, talk about stressful. Put away the cell phone, the coffee, or anything that might distract you for the next few hours. Take out your charts, your well-thought-out strategy (which usually ended up in shambles after the first 15 minutes of trading). After that class, I decided that making a living as a trader is not in my future.

 

[ERD50]

I took a class called trading simulations in which your final grade depended on how much you could clean your classmates' clocks. Wow, talk about stressful. Put away the cell phone, the coffee, or anything that might distract you for the next few hours. Take out your charts, your well-thought-out strategy (which usually ended up in shambles after the first 15 minutes of trading). After that class, I decided that making a living as a trader is not in my future.

Where was this class offered?

I found the whole idea of it silly and misguided. If I were to take part, I would just pick some of the most downtrodden stocks, maybe just one, put all my money into it and take a nap. And just hope it recovered big time.

If the "winner" is the one with the most gains, the obvious solution is to take the most risk. You have a chance of winning, and what do you have to lose? Odds are, if you reliably could pull off a very respectable 20% per cycle, and do it cycle after cycle, there would be one (different) lucky bozo that got 40% and you lose.

But that doesn't help you in real life. So what's the point?

It would be far more interesting to me to know whether the class on average did better than a market index with similar volatility over that time frame. If they didn't do better on average, then what exactly did they learn? How to invest time to lose money?

*Someone* is always winning in Las Vegas.


-ERD50

 

[BunsGettingFirm]

Where was this class offered?

I found the whole idea of it silly and misguided. If I were to take part, I would just pick some of the most downtrodden stocks, maybe just one, put all my money into it and take a nap. And just hope it recovered big time.

If the "winner" is the one with the most gains, the obvious solution is to take the most risk. You have a chance of winning, and what do you have to lose? Odds are, if you reliably could pull off a very respectable 20% per cycle, and do it cycle after cycle, there would be one (different) lucky bozo that got 40% and you lose.

But that doesn't help you in real life. So what's the point?

It would be far more interesting to me to know whether the class on average did better than a market index with similar volatility over that time frame. If they didn't do better on average, then what exactly did they learn? How to invest time to lose money?

*Someone* is always winning in Las Vegas.


-ERD50

It was offered as part of the MBA. The stocks being traded were not real stocks, so you can't use outside information to "buy some down trodden stock and take a nap." You and the rest of your class's trading activity is making up the prices as you trade. In fact, if you took even a 5 minute break from the trading station, you'd be dead meat. What you are describing is more of a portfolio management competition. I have done that as well. Heck, without compromising myself too much, taking a nap isn't enough necessary. During the first team meeting, our professor detailed all the ways you can work around the competition rules such as loading up the portfolio with penny stocks and actually going out and buying the stocks on the open market.