Ghost of Igloi wrote:
Seattle,
Hope your race went well. I posted an article supporting my view which several ignored. My view would be anyone gaming the market for short term gain. QE has encouraged this behavior and investors were rewarded for this behavior. Has that changed? Perhaps, sure it well intermediate term.
Igy
"trading", Short-term trading", "day-trading" - they all mean something deifferent to different people.
From what i've read, it seems that the belief that traders usually lose money is a widespread opinion about the markets. I've looked up a few (very few) discussions on it and it seems that its commonly felt that there's some truth to it regarding day-trading. But in terms of longer term trading, it is highly disputed, and those making the claim are not siting sources.
One point that seems well taken is that retail traders (excluding day traders, short termers) often underperfom broad indices but do make a profit. Another words, if the S&P showed a profit of say $6% over a given duration, the average for retail trader would have been to make 3.8% over the identical period. Yes, less than the indices, but not losing.
I would not be surprised if you would be in agreement with this, now that i see you were refering to short-term trading in particular.
Yes, race went well enough. Thanks, and hope you are fairing well as well.