
I Took a Couple Years Off of Work to Swing Trade. Here’s What Happened - paulpauper
https://theascent.pub/i-took-a-couple-years-off-of-work-to-swing-trade-heres-what-happened-fbaa53087f3
======
Lazare
"A lot of people have flipped a coin 10 times and had it come up heads only
4-6 times, but I had it come up heads a full 7 times, so clearly I have an
extremely proficient coin flipping technique. Sit down and listen to me
discuss the wrist exercises I did!"

A lot of people have tried to do what the author did and lost all their money.
He recounts how he lost tons of money on different occasions. He says it's
been bad for his mental health. He freely admits that much of the limited
success he did have was luck, and mentions that doing it during a bull market
made everything much easier. But even so he product calculates that, once he
mastered this skill hes...

...failed to beat the market. Ouch.

For anyone who skimmed the article (which spends about 90% of it's length
talking up "swing trading" and making it sound like the author thinks it's a
great idea), make sure you read to the end:

> So what should you do with your time instead of mastering swing trading?
> Find what you really want to do with your life that adds value to the world,
> and get to work!

Quite right. (Well, assuming for the sake of argument that swing trading is
actually a thing, and that it's something that can be mastered.)

~~~
nanoseltzer
What’s swing trading ? Is that like day trading where you try to buy low and
sell high on small fluctuations ?

~~~
blueboo
It's like day trading, in that _it's total nonsense._ Reading tea leaves of
patterns in charts of 'cup and handle', 'double top', 'flags and pennants' is
what your gut tells you. It's astrology, dowsing, EVP -- our brains' amazing
ability finding patterns in noise.

Once in a while, someone lucks out, or at least enough to turn it into a
proselytizing grift. Y'know, like writing and selling a few thousand copies of
an Amazon book or making a youtube series (totally something a successful
investor would do!) Looks like this guy bought into it -- pity him!

> Being frugal, I still wanted to dabble with money-making opportunities at my
> disposal.

> Swing trading was one option, so I tried it.

> As a business teacher, I already knew a lot about trading and personal
> finance.

I can't believe these three sentences occurred in sequence. This man is a
caricature of a Dunning-Kruger profile. Even a "frugal" "business teacher"
succumbs to the lure of magical get-rich-quick thinking! I doubt he would have
much pity if his own students indulged in such willful stupidity...

So heed exactly zero of his foolish advice -- it's a litany of what not to do
in investing. Save for the warning not to pursue this folly.

Also note: the hottest version of this scam is in bitcoin:
[https://uk.tradingview.com/chart/BTCUSD/JwruXpQx-Head-and-
sh...](https://uk.tradingview.com/chart/BTCUSD/JwruXpQx-Head-and-shoulders-
pattern/)

~~~
toomuchtodo
> succumbs to the lure of magical get-rich-quick thinking!

When it works, it works. Is it gambling? Probably no more so than ISOs.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/80e7x2/the_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/80e7x2/the_big_long_made_25_million_in_january_off_100k/)
(/r/wallstreetbets | The Big Long - Made $2.5 million in January off $100k
options investment)

------
arkadiyt
> A few years into swing trading, and I can say I learned a lot. I’ve made
> more than I’ve lost. I’m up about 16% ROI year to date.

The article was published December 15th 2017, so he made 16% since January
1st.

If he had bought the S&P500 on January 1st 2017 (2276.98) and sold on December
15th (2675.81) he'd be up > 17.5% (and who knows how much he paid in
commissions).

~~~
InclinedPlane
Not to mention how much it cost in time to do all that work. Index funds don't
incur any opportunity cost overhead in terms of your own time, they are fire
and forget.

~~~
andrewbinstock
This! I am convinced that with a lot of careful work, you can beat the market
a little. But to do so, you've got to work at it more than full time. To get
paid for your time, you've got to be working with a ton of money so that a
1-2% beat gives you a good salary.

Otherwise, just invest in the major indices, diversify your portfolio so that
it's appropriate for your current and future needs, and do something else with
your life.

------
InclinedPlane
> Being frugal, I still wanted to dabble with money-making opportunities at my
> disposal.

That... does not sound frugal to me. Frugal is working some part-time job
during your time off, keeping your expenses low, and maintaining your savings,
not gambling in the stock market.

~~~
painful
Being frugal has nothing to do with one's income. Your advice to work a part-
time job is no less irrelevant to frugality than his to engage in other
ventures.

------
Mikeb85
I've done some trading (2010-2014 was probably when I did the most) and played
poker full time, among other things. Profitable at both. The only problem is
that's it's tough on your mental health, stress levels, and while it's easy
enough to be profitable (my education was in economics which is a great
background for both activities), it's tough to be more profitable than a
decent full-time job while also growing your bankroll if you start with a
modest amount. I probably could have kept it up if I lived somewhere with a
very low cost of living or was willing to give up my lifestyle, but in the end
I decided the stress wasn't worth it.

------
prewett
I read an analysis of technical trading that demonstrated that the theoretical
best return is buy-and-hold in a bull market, and only do technical trading in
a down market.

[1]
[http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2016/01/gtt/](http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2016/01/gtt/)

~~~
nradov
It's bullshit. There's no reliable way to time the market. Horoscopes would be
just as accurate as predicting recessions as pseudo-intellectual articles like
this.

~~~
nightski
You don't need to time the market though. People act as if traders go all in
on every stock purchase betting everything. That's not how it works.

------
hemantv
If you are engineer there are better use of your time than trading.

I say from experience lost a good chunk, learned a good chunk but most
importantly lost my mind in the process. Thankfully woke up after few months
and realized what harm I was doing.

I certainly learned a lot about business, capital markets and common life
patterns.

~~~
brador
What does common life patterns mean?

~~~
hemantv
Momentum is the number #1

------
Zarath
It's terrible for your mental health, that's for sure.

------
uptava
it takes at least 4-5 years to become a profitable trader. 1-2 years is
nothing. just to learn the mechanics it will take couple of years.

~~~
marketgod
This exactly. It's like starting a business, more so, a bootstrapped business.
You have to make sacrifices to achieve your goal. You probably would need to
spend 16-18 hours a day testing all the different ways you can find your edge.
It's a never ending cycle as well, so once it starts to work, you have to keep
refining it. The first few years are pretty challenging but when it pays, it
pays. Many businesses fail, similarly, many traders fail as well.

------
uptava
it takes at least 4-5 years to become a profitable trader.

