who makes money tradng stocks

[pathseaker]

how easy is it making money trading stocks for a living?

 

[oosie]

I trade the forex market which is very similar ,it is easy yet complicated,stock trading movies of the past is very misleading,you need the right mindset(attitude, discipline),trade system,money management skills,trading is very unemotional but can be very profitable .The forex market is much ,much bigger than than the stock market,wiki forex market and you will see the facts(do not make the mistake and google forex or stock markets because you will get a billion results and sale pitches,if you want some web sites for forex pm me and i will gladly forward you some

to answer your question,Yes it is easy with practice and hard work

 

[Viva]

I trade some stock, but not for a living - I tend to follow a long term approach. To make a living of trading stocks might be harder than some would expect. Except for skill, experience, discipline and a lot of patience, you will need big volumes of money to make it really profitable. You should be able to find some good information using google.

 

[Other Pineapple Smurf]

I only knew one guy that actually made a living out it and he gave me the best advice ever, don't do it!

The success rate is minimal and with the amount of cash required to get descent returns, your better off investing in property or starting a small business. Not saying nobody makes money but oosie makes some good points.

 

[Tanconnie]

Please send me.

 

[cguy]

I do, but with a very significant amount of infrastructure to support me. I personally wouldn't try short term trading with just my own capital and a brokerage account.

 

[Cius]

What cguy said. Its mostly successful with guys who can afford the infrastructure and data to support it. That stuff is a huge overhead which is who most equity trading is done via trading floors in companies who are set up for it. To get a big enough account balance to actually live off of it is the tough part. Perhaps an option if you inherit 10Mil suddenly but otherwise not really an option unless you are either very lucky or just that good.

I know equity traders who make some serious money but again, those are guys trading company money and being paid for it (prop trading), not guys trading for themselves.

 

[Park@82]

Please send me.

What?

 

[RickyGC]

Anyone trading crypto?

 

[kidnotorious]

Invariably, people go about it the wrong way. That and many people who say they want to trade are unwilling to put in a small fraction of the effort or commitment required.

How long did it take me from going to trainee to running $350 million risk for a bank? 18 months give or take.
How long did it take me to figure out retail trading? A couple of years, and I am talking closer to 5, not 2
The difference, at a bank you learn by watching, then doing. Retail you learn on your own.

Another difference is information flow and earning the spread. Retail you pay the spread + commissions. Do not underestimate this. 10x talk about how fees and commissions affect your pension in the long term? Well, spreads and fees have a similar effect.

Forex is most popular because leverage is most accessible. That said, forex is the hardest market to trade. Learn to trade stocks first, then futures, then forex. That said. Not all markets are equal. The JSE is fook hard to trade. At the moment LSE and DAX are slow movers and good for momentum trading. US markets are great for higher volatility trading, esp the first 2 hours.

 

[airborne]

Interesting question op.
Good point above about the fees, I've just learnt a valuable lesson with that and my RA, fees just means you need far higher returns to make the trades decently profitable.

What kind fee percentage do you pay on platforms like easy equities etc?

 

[Slootvreter]

Sorry not me

 

[rietrot]

What kind fee percentage do you pay on platforms like easy equities etc?

EE claim 0.64% on their home page, but actually charged me 0.622% per transaction.

 

[NarrowBandFtw]

Who? HFT algorithms that's who ...

 

[HavocXphere]

Hell no. Tried it for a bit and very quickly figured out that as a private individual you've got the entire world stacked against you.

So now I just buy and hold.

 

[genelock]

how easy is it making money trading stocks for a living?

go crack a beer and forget all about this idea

This is honestly the best advice anyone could give you in this thread
unless someone suggests a fancy whiskey or something

 

[SauRoNZA]

What cguy said. Its mostly successful with guys who can afford the infrastructure and data to support it. That stuff is a huge overhead which is who most equity trading is done via trading floors in companies who are set up for it. To get a big enough account balance to actually live off of it is the tough part. Perhaps an option if you inherit 10Mil suddenly but otherwise not really an option unless you are either very lucky or just that good.

I know equity traders who make some serious money but again, those are guys trading company money and being paid for it (prop trading), not guys trading for themselves.

Not really.

If you have a bar to play with and can average a measly 10% or less in a month you are good to go and bested the average salary market.

Now if you aren't greedy that means you could work one or two weeks a month and then relax the rest of it pushing your hourly rate sky high.

The problem is that less than 20% of the market are actually winners and it's the rest that are losers who pay them. At least in the case of Forex.

Being that 20% or getting there is where the money is lost. If you are good at it you could go far with a bar. If you aren't well then you'll keep pissing money away until you realise you aren't.

It's the learning experience that costs money.

****

If I did actually inherit 10bar though I certainly wouldn't risk it on anything and put it in a fixed investment and be set for life.

 

[cguy]

Not really.

If you have a bar to play with and can average a measly 10% or less in a month you are good to go and bested the average salary market.

Now if you aren't greedy that means you could work one or two weeks a month and then relax the rest of it pushing your hourly rate sky high.

The problem is that less than 20% of the market are actually winners and it's the rest that are losers who pay them. At least in the case of Forex.

Being that 20% or getting there is where the money is lost. If you are good at it you could go far with a bar. If you aren't well then you'll keep pissing money away until you realise you aren't.

It's the learning experience that costs money.

****

If I did actually inherit 10bar though I certainly wouldn't risk it on anything and put it in a fixed investment and be set for life.

True, all one has to do is get an annual return of 214%, and we're good to go...

 

[SauRoNZA]

True, all one has to do is get an annual return of 214%, and we're good to go...

Not quite as you pull the money out to pay your "salary". So would be more like 120% if it all goes right.

To make 10% a month off your capital
doesn't really seem all that crazy in the Forex side of things, for an expert with consistency, at least not from the bits I played with demo accounts.

Obviously there is a good chance of getting it wrong and losing it all, but the bigger issue is people getting greedy and then losing it all.

I don't personally dable in this stuff but know a few people who do and although I don't have exact hard numbers for what they win or lose they seem to be doing more than fine overall.

What do you trade though? Equities specifically?

 

[cguy]

Not quite as you pull the money out to pay your "salary". So would be more like 120% if it all goes right.

If you are making 10% on your capital, it would be crazy to take out your gains and spend it instead of reinvesting it. At that rate you're tripling your money every year, so you would have R250m in 5 years. The reality though is that most strategies with that size of return would see it's returns degrade as the capital used goes up, but R1m is very little, and one would be insane to not increase it until marginal capital increases cause the appropriate loss in return. (I.e., within two years, perhaps you could get to R10m with a 8%/m return, or after 4-5 years, R100m with a 5%/m return -- both much better scenarios).

To make 10% a month off your capital
doesn't really seem all that crazy in the Forex side of things, for an expert with consistency, at least not from the bits I played with demo accounts.

Yeah, it is pretty crazy. To have a positive expectation at all is very very hard. There is usually a fundamentally incorrect presumption built in when someone does well on demo accounts or even real accounts over the short term.

Obviously there is a good chance of getting it wrong and losing it all, but the bigger issue is people getting greedy and then losing it all.

I don't personally dable in this stuff but know a few people who do and although I don't have exact hard numbers for what they win or lose they seem to be doing more than fine overall.

I would be very wary of getting information from this type of source. Probably the biggest factor to be aware of is survivorship bias - the people who you know trade the stuff, do so because they've been successful. Those who haven't been successful, don't do it anymore, and therefore don't talk about it or even identify as traders - this is probably a much larger group than the former. Also, in my experience, the day trader types who say that they're doing well, say this on their up months, and just say nothing on their down months, creating a perception bias in those they talk to. More than likely these guys are on average losing or breaking even, and have alternative sources of income that actually makes up their livelihood.

What do you trade though? Equities specifically?

Pretty much everything.