Any stock traders?

[Korbal]

I've been talking it over with a friend and I think I might give it a try to see if I can make a few bucks. Just wondering if there is anyone who actively trades stock and has some helpful advice to someone who is thinking of starting.

[Lyrical]

Originally Posted by Korbal

I've been talking it over with a friend and I think I might give it a try to see if I can make a few bucks. Just wondering if there is anyone who actively trades stock and has some helpful advice to someone who is thinking of starting.

I am investing strictly in mutual funds right now. It takes so much work to try to beat the market. It is like a full time job.

[Everlast]

Originally Posted by Korbal

I've been talking it over with a friend and I think I might give it a try to see if I can make a few bucks. Just wondering if there is anyone who actively trades stock and has some helpful advice to someone who is thinking of starting.

Well first I suggest you use play money, invest in some shit - realisticaly as to how you would really invest - get a feel and then work from there. Subscribe to lots of newletters read read read, watch the market, and if all else fails have a brother who is a stock trader.

[Lucane Darkseraphim]

I suggest reading reputable books on investing before venturing into this. Stay away from almost anything that has been written within the past 20 years, heh. Just as a quick tip, active trading is a foolish thing to do. Do not pretend that you know what a stock will do in the next few weeks, because you don't. A good thing to do is to do your research, find which type of stocks have the most potential for profit, then find which companies within that field have the most potential for growth. Buy those stocks if they are cheap and hold them for years until they have matured.

And for the love of god, do not buy Google. Christ.

[Eomer]

I've been buying and selling mutual funds in my RRSP (kind of like a 401k) and doing fairly well. But I'd have to be an idiot to not have made money on mutual funds in the past 3 years, the TSX has gone up like 30-40% in that time. I've been considering taking a few thousand worth of my mutual funds and moving them into equities, but there's a lot of research involved to avoid losing your shirt and I don't know how the trading commissions and so on work, there's a lot of terminology to brush up on.

I just do my trading through my Scotiabank account, I believe the investing account is ScotiaMcleod, if there's any difference.

The biggest problem for most people with investing in either stocks or mutual funds is that people behave like pack animals, for the most part. For example, mutual fund contributions hit their highest ever numbers in late 2005 in Canada. The reason for that is because the market's been returning ridiculous amounts for the past two or three years, so people are all like "oh wow, I can make me some good money too!" Problem is, the market might well be at it's peak, or there could be a correction, and all those idiots buying in late will intially lose a portion of their investments. Same thing with shit like Google, it was a great buy initially, but now it's monetary suicide IMO.

[xeg_IS]

I'm a full time college student and trade on the side. I generally trade at least once every two days. You can beat the market, but it's not easy by any means. You have to be ballsy, but know how to make good decisions. You have to know when to take your profits, sit on your losses, or get out.

I mostly trade stocks on the NYSE and occasionally the Nasdaq. I mainly pick the NYSE since it is the least volitile of the exchanges. I trade on margin, which means I borrow money from my brokerage in order to amplify my position. For example, if I have $5,000 in my brokerage account, I can trade with $10,000. You have to be extremely careful when buying on margin as if the price of your stock drops too low, you may receive a "margin call" and you could potentially lose more than you have invested. Margin trading is not for beginners. Stop loss orders are an absolute must in all situations of trading.

Definetly read a book or two and learn the basics before you trade with real money. I'm not so much of a fan of paper trading because it's missing one very large aspect of the stock market: emotion. To a degree, it's like night and day.

I'd be happy to answer any questions I can. I'm still learning, as is everyone in this brutal game.

[Ashes Emberblade]

I invest in the market, have been for nearly a decade with a consistent 30-50% return rate per year. Maintained that even during the tech "bubble" bursting. I follow what I call the "Warren Buffett" method.

Basically, Warren Buffett made a shitload of money buying really good companies when they were flying under the radar with a really low share price. So, I try to do the same thing. I use the stock searching tool here: http://prosearch.businessweek.com/bu...?mode=advanced

I look for stocks with a really low P/E ratio, good cash flow, good EPS, and a good return on sales. The last three show that the company is doing well, has a decent amount of capital, and is making a return on its investments. The P/E ratio, if low, means the stock is underpriced relatively speaking. Out of the list that search brings up, I select stocks that I've actually heard of, so that I know they have a good brand name and "recognizability." This assures me that, if this really is a good company, other people are going to realize its value and buy it.

Now, after I've narrowed my list down with the steps above, I look at the charts for the stocks with which I'm left. This is called technical analysis, and it lets me know whether I should buy, or wait for the price to retrace a bit to buy. If you do anything, read up on technical analysis. I do this on a quarterly basis.

Keep in mind that there is a huge difference between trading and investing. It's much easier to predict what will happen in the next year, than it is to predict the next two hours.

P.S. Using this method I bought ET, FIA, TRU, and GT at the beginning of this year. I sold GT after losing 10% on it. I'm up 30% on the first three. Last September I bought HAL, SID, HSVLY, INTC, and GGB. Made 100% on HSVLY and about 45% overall for the entire quarter.

[aw3s0me]

Originally Posted by Lucane Darkseraphim

I suggest reading reputable books on investing before venturing into this. Stay away from almost anything that has been written within the past 20 years, heh. Just as a quick tip, active trading is a foolish thing to do. Do not pretend that you know what a stock will do in the next few weeks, because you don't. A good thing to do is to do your research, find which type of stocks have the most potential for profit, then find which companies within that field have the most potential for growth. Buy those stocks if they are cheap and hold them for years until they have matured.

And for the love of god, do not buy Google. Christ.

lol @ google. its funny how all the insiders and executives were mass selling their stock 2 weeks ago, and said not to worry cause executives always do this sort of thing when their company is doing well .. and just last week they announced a revenue warning ..

EDIT: as for advice on investing, don't believe people when they say invest with "soandso" strategy cause it makes you 50% per quarter or guarenteed 100% per year ... thats ridiculous. people who trade like that are crazy and are going to get burned sooner or later.

[Lucane Darkseraphim]

Originally Posted by Ashes Emberblade

I invest in the market, have been for nearly a decade with a consistent 30-50% return rate per year. Maintained that even during the tech "bubble" bursting. I follow what I call the "Warren Buffett" method.

Basically, Warren Buffett made a shitload of money buying really good companies when they were flying under the radar with a really low share price. So, I try to do the same thing. I use the stock searching tool here: http://prosearch.businessweek.com/bu...?mode=advanced

I look for stocks with a really low P/E ratio, good cash flow, good EPS, and a good return on sales. The last three show that the company is doing well, has a decent amount of capital, and is making a return on its investments. The P/E ratio, if low, means the stock is underpriced relatively speaking. Out of the list that search brings up, I select stocks that I've actually heard of, so that I know they have a good brand name and "recognizability." This assures me that, if this really is a good company, other people are going to realize its value and buy it.

Now, after I've narrowed my list down with the steps above, I look at the charts for the stocks with which I'm left. This is called technical analysis, and it lets me know whether I should buy, or wait for the price to retrace a bit to buy. If you do anything, read up on technical analysis. I do this on a quarterly basis.

Keep in mind that there is a huge difference between trading and investing. It's much easier to predict what will happen in the next year, than it is to predict the next two hours.

P.S. Using this method I bought ET, FIA, TRU, and GT at the beginning of this year. I sold GT after losing 10% on it. I'm up 30% on the first three. Last September I bought HAL, SID, HSVLY, INTC, and GGB. Made 100% on HSVLY and about 45% overall for the entire quarter.

Definitely the right way to go, good advice. You can't go wrong with following the lessons of Buffett and Graham.

[Ronne]

I have 800 shares of walmart stock that was a gift from my uncle many years ago, am I rich yet?

[Lucane Darkseraphim]

Pretty nice gift - worth 36k now. Hopefully he bought those before '00 though, otherwise he likely lost money on the investment. =(

[Eomer]

Heh, just dropped about 2500 bucks into a few stocks, based on recommendations by a friend of mine fresh out of University getting his degree in economics. They're all very small cap stocks, low volume, high risk for the most part (this money is in an RRSP, which I believe is similar to a 401K, basically I put money into it and that's deducted from my yearly earnings, and any gains made are not taxed so long as they stay in the account. The vast majority is invested in stock index mutual funds, which have made me a mint in the past 3 years). I bought the shares in the companies last Monday, and through last week nothing much happened at all.

Until today. One of them was a kind of tech company that is looking into removing hydrocarbons from waste water coming from oil/tar sands operations in Northern Alberta. For obvious reasons, this is potentially very lucrative, but this company is just getting started or hasn't had much luck in getting contracts or whatever, my buddy did the research, I'm just riding on his coat tails.

http://www.cbc.ca/business/stockQuot...p?ticker=v.tor

Woo, doubled my money in a single day pretty much. I bought in at .50 (plus commission). Unfortunately it was the company I put the least in, as it was by far the most risky. But I think I owe my buddy a few beers if the share price continues to rise, he turned my 500 into 1000 or possibly more. Gonna hang on to the stock just for the hell of it, not worth selling my shares at this point.

Sent him an email asking what in the fuck happened today to cause that. Normal trading volume for that company is like 50,000 shares a day, it hit over one million today.

I can see how people can get addicted to this shit, and fritter away all their money. When it's all online, it doesn't even feel like you're risking your money, it feels like a goddamn video game.

[hamrlik]

Lots of people saying read books on this, but does anyone have any recommendations? Also any recommendations for books that talk about investing/saving?

[Lucane Darkseraphim]

'The Intelligent Investor' by Ben Graham is a must. It is your Bible.

[Fadaar]

Originally Posted by Ashes Emberblade

I invest in the market, have been for nearly a decade with a consistent 30-50% return rate per year. Maintained that even during the tech "bubble" bursting. I follow what I call the "Warren Buffett" method.

Basically, Warren Buffett made a shitload of money buying really good companies when they were flying under the radar with a really low share price. So, I try to do the same thing. I use the stock searching tool here: http://prosearch.businessweek.com/bu...?mode=advanced

I look for stocks with a really low P/E ratio, good cash flow, good EPS, and a good return on sales. The last three show that the company is doing well, has a decent amount of capital, and is making a return on its investments. The P/E ratio, if low, means the stock is underpriced relatively speaking. Out of the list that search brings up, I select stocks that I've actually heard of, so that I know they have a good brand name and "recognizability." This assures me that, if this really is a good company, other people are going to realize its value and buy it.

Now, after I've narrowed my list down with the steps above, I look at the charts for the stocks with which I'm left. This is called technical analysis, and it lets me know whether I should buy, or wait for the price to retrace a bit to buy. If you do anything, read up on technical analysis. I do this on a quarterly basis.

Keep in mind that there is a huge difference between trading and investing. It's much easier to predict what will happen in the next year, than it is to predict the next two hours.

P.S. Using this method I bought ET, FIA, TRU, and GT at the beginning of this year. I sold GT after losing 10% on it. I'm up 30% on the first three. Last September I bought HAL, SID, HSVLY, INTC, and GGB. Made 100% on HSVLY and about 45% overall for the entire quarter.

Probably not a good idea for beginners to try something like that. Catching companies before they have their massive upswing (just off the top of my head companies like Dell, Microsoft, Apple, Google, and others that have gone from small guys with ideas to massive world-dominating corporations -- and with Google, solar system wide domination!) is hard simply because for every one that works, there's a hundred others that fold.