Any daytraders/investors here?

[steakandrice]

I'm into daytrading/short term investing. I pretty much daytrade stock options in QQQs and DIAs (before and at work). Also, I am starting to buildup a diversified portfolio. My fav tool is using the Japanese Candlestick pattern for looking at charts.

Anyone else here trade for fun/$$$/professionally??? Any good books to recommend? Anyone hit it big or retire early? Any big pimpin stories??

[younggiftedandblack]

I've got a couple hundred bucks in the market right now. I'm reading Investing for Dummies so I can get a better grasp of the basics before I start doing some day trading.

[Rogmok]

my brother used to day trade... and was all he could talk about... until he lost five figures after the market crashes.

he doesn't talk about it anymore.

[artsfartsyjanet]

i have a friend who used to daytrade, but that took up a lot of his time, and he says he used to talk about it constantly. Quite exhausting. Now, he just works with freetrade and doing great! He put in $12,000 and is up to almost $18,000 in a matter of 7 months. Up 50%.

[ChairmanMah]

i took my money out to buy a house so i missed out on some good gains in my stock but i'll get back in.

I'm finding energy stocks are generally good performers if you find good ones.

[Emperor_Mike]

I'm a half-hearted investor now. Got burned pretty badly during the crash. I don't have a very diversified portfolio, not surprising since I only have shares in one company: August Tech (AUGT) on Nasdaq. It's doing OK I guess. Lost quite a bit on paper over the past couple of years, but the performance in 2003 has been good so far.

As for stories, during the early days of the dotcom debacle (when it wasn't yet a debacle) I began investing small amounts in early companies like Yahoo! and Lycos through my dad. After I landed my first dotcom job in Cali, I was able to put more money into the markets (again tech stocks) and since I was staying in my uncle's apartment in San Francisco the pressure of living off an annual thirty odd thousand thousand dollar salary was more or less eliminated. Even made some extra money charging my roommates (reasonable) rent. ;) So in short, I had a bit of money to play around and speculate with. By that time Yahoo! had reached some great highs and I cashed out pretty well, only to put more money into the markets in some "safe" shares like MSFT and ORCL. When those reached an adequate selling price off they went too.

To make a long (and arduous) story short, things were rosy until the crash took six figures from me. :( Nevertheless, I think I was very fortunate to have started cashing out relatively early in the dotcom era. Enough, at any rate, to gradually build up a block of 250K shares in August Tech. I'm not sure if I'd term it "wise investment" however. More like luck.

[Emperor_Mike]

How much did you buy it for?
Doens't look too good on it's financial status. Overhead expense is high, that's where they are loosing money, all the gross profit of sales is eaten up by expenses. Operating in the red. Only had earnings in 2000, lost in all other years.

I stay away from tech companies now, I had invested in it before ... but like most, I lost. Still writing off on lost ($3,000 per year). Biggest lost was on Cisco (CSCO), fucken killed me. Lucent and Microsoft. Don't even have any money in 401K. I know, stupid. Tho my money is still in savings, I'm loosing it slowly thru depreciation. Ahhhh .... fuck it.

Hopefully, the market will pick up. Maybe then, but now ... the best investment is probably my house. Thank God, it's appreciating real fast.


I had shares in the predecessor corporation named York Technologies. When August was formed there was a share swap (forgot the ratio) and I ended up with about 100K. I steadily purchased the remaining 150K at around $7-10 when the markets hit a low awhile back. I think I'll begin to liquidate my holdings this year. The shares will have to drop to $6 before I incur any "real" loss so even in the worse case scenario I'll still end up with $1.2M USD gross (Canadian tax of about 40-45%,) excluding the $140,000 hit I took back in the dotbomb. Not a lot of money by today's standards, but it'll do.

I'm not sure if it's the right time to invest again. Maybe I'll just live off the interest on my accounts and be happy with that. I'm still a bit wary about techs. :(