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.
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.<p>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.
Throw away account here as I'll share some financial details.<p>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.<p>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].<p>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.<p>Over the last 9 years, I've invested roughly in this order of priority:<p>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.<p>Hope this helps!<p>[0] <a href="http://www.cfapubs.org/doi/sum/10.2469/faj.v66.n2.7" rel="nofollow">http://www.cfapubs.org/doi/sum/10.2469/faj.v66.n2.7</a><p>[1] <a href="http://www.sec.gov/investor/alerts/ib_fees_expenses.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.sec.gov/investor/alerts/ib_fees_expenses.pdf</a><p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax_in_the_Unite...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://personal.vanguard.com/us/FundsInvQuestionnaire" rel="nofollow">https://personal.vanguard.com/us/FundsInvQuestionnaire</a>
tl;dr Know what you're buying, know your risk threshold, hold it as long as you can, invest frequently.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Here's some homework. Look up these terms:<p>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...<p>fun time 45 min talk on the basics:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEDIj9JBTC8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEDIj9JBTC8</a>
If you are serious, this is everything you need to know:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6ciY8u04Kk" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6ciY8u04Kk</a><p>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.