Please teach me everything you know (in one post)

[drillinto]

In eleven letters: BHP Billiton

 

[nunthewiser]

In eleven letters: BHP Billiton

short ?

 

[SmellyTerror]

In eleven letters: BHP Billiton

Yeah, a large part of the money I have to invest is testament to the ease of making it grow as the market climbs out of a pit. Give me conditions like this forever and I don't need to know anything else.

...but I figure I better learn how to fish.

 

[Wysiwyg]

This post by Mr. Howard Bandy is worth knowing.

Greetings all--

Developing trading systems that are profitable is very hard.

Barriers to entry into trading are low, rewards for being right are high, the markets are very nearly efficient.

The basis of any trading system is to identify some inefficiency in the issue being traded -- identify some pattern that precedes a profitable trading opportunity. Making profitable trades removes a portion of the inefficiency making it more difficult to be profitable in the future.

Your competition is well educated, well trained, well paid, well equipped.

I agree with Geoff Colvin in "Talent is Overrated" and Malcolm Gladwell in "Outliers" that it takes on the order of 10,000 hours of high quality practice to become expert at anything. If anything, that is an underestimate for trading.

Thanks for listening,
Howard

 

[ENP]

You said "sitting on shares is a bit boring"

So do you want to become a trader just for "something to do" or because you think you can out perform buy and hold after tax, brokerage, etc?

I constantly thought you had to be doing something everyday, making the big trades, I got itchy feet because I wasn't active in the sharemarket every week. But now I look back on it, if you are invested in good companies that are making you money, you are happy to be invested in them, then inactivity is sometimes the best.