
Ask HN: Do you day trade in stock market? What are your investing strategies? - trapped
Do you day trade in stock market? What are your investing strategies? Please share some insights and learnings along with what worked and not worked for you. 
I know this question has been asked on reddit and other forums too but I am curious to know the opinion of HN community and what fellow Tech crowd in the Valley and around the world does about investing.
Thanks.
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tugberkk
Well, I don't know if it varies from country to country. But in my country
(Turkey), there are prestigious companies which are almost %100 guaranteed to
be stable.

What I do is, as long as the stock price drops, I keep on buying. As long as
it is increasing, I sell. I just don't buy or sell all of them; I just do it
as it increases/decreases.

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throw8675309
Throw away account here as I'll share some financial details.

tldr: You won't make money day trading. Invest for the long term taking into
account tax considerations and your risk appetite. I have and it has served me
well.

In general I've learned that reducing fees [0] and thinking carefully about
how to allocate investments across asset classes [1] is a much more successful
strategy than picking individual stocks. Also try to hold on to investments
for more than a year so you're taxed 15% on the profits rather than 30+% [2].

First thing you'll want to do is consider your asset allocation. I haven't
used this tool myself, as I used an advisor, [3] but I consider Vanguard
trustworthy as they are owned by their customers and have a good reputation.
The purpose of a tool like this is to get a feel for how much you should be
investing in equity vs bonds, vs real estate vs other exotic investments
(hedge funds /private equity). I took a similar test through a financial
advisor years ago and found it useful.

Over the last 9 years, I've invested roughly in this order of priority:

1) 401k for company matching & tax benefits - total profit of ~70k over the
years. Starting from 0 balance 9 years ago, but recently have been maxing out
contributions at ~17k per year 2) Exchange Traded Funds - SPY, DXJ, HEDJ.
Essentially diversified, low fee investments in the US Stock market, Japan
stock market and Europe. Total profit of ~30k over the years. 3) Bought a
house, which I ended up renting. On paper profit of ~100k, but transaction
costs (costs to buy and sell) eat into a large part of it. Long term it's a
good plan. 4) Invested in a few individual stocks, lost a few hundred dollars.
5) Invested in options on a few individual stocks, lost ~3k. Learn about time
decay before doing this.

Hope this helps!

[0]
[http://www.cfapubs.org/doi/sum/10.2469/faj.v66.n2.7](http://www.cfapubs.org/doi/sum/10.2469/faj.v66.n2.7)

[1]
[http://www.sec.gov/investor/alerts/ib_fees_expenses.pdf](http://www.sec.gov/investor/alerts/ib_fees_expenses.pdf)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax_in_the_Unite...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax_in_the_United_States)

[3]
[https://personal.vanguard.com/us/FundsInvQuestionnaire](https://personal.vanguard.com/us/FundsInvQuestionnaire)

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kleer001
tl;dr Know what you're buying, know your risk threshold, hold it as long as
you can, invest frequently.

It's going to sound like a stale and naive quip but buy low and sell high. I
look for deals. Sometimes that's an IPO with a nice finance sheet. Sometimes
it's a huge correction on a popular mega-corporation.

Weather you're a value investor or a growth investor the goal is profit,
right? What works for me is knowing what I'm investing in. I'm familiar with
the products or services.

It's a fun topic. There's lots to read out there. Sturgeons Law holds in full
effect. 90% of all of it is total crap. All you need is probably at your local
library.

Here's some homework. Look up these terms:

dead cat bounce, double top, exponential moving average, don't fight the tape,
upgrades, channel, channel up, channel down, wedge, triangle, insider selling,
dividends, oversold, ticker, forex, a falling knife has no handle, FUD,
Irrational exuberance...

fun time 45 min talk on the basics:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEDIj9JBTC8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEDIj9JBTC8)

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bbcbasic
If you are serious, this is everything you need to know:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6ciY8u04Kk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6ciY8u04Kk)

If you still want to day trade after watching these, then I guess get yourself
to NY or London etc. and try and get a job like that.

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mendelevium
[https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/make-money-investing-
tips/](https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/make-money-investing-tips/)

~~~
bbcbasic
Seems reasonable but not all good advice:

> One reason I like startups is that they represent a middle way: you can get
> some equity or ownership in a business that might turn out very well, but
> you also get a salary.

Yeah just search HN for the horror stories. Enough said.

Work out if the EV is better working for big corp and using your extra salary
to buy shares. But...

> Can you guess what happened next? The dot com crash happened, and shares of
> Cisco plummeted to $12/share.

Yes you need a portfolio.

