so i'm not one to brag to strangers about my winnings, typically, but...

[Neal Clayton]

this time i can't help it ;).

i've played the stock market for about 4 years now. and for the most part, i've always done well. made the down payment on my house in my first year, made enough to pay for all the lumber needed to restore said house the next, and had made about 35% this year up until a couple of months ago. i made money on oil stocks last year and got out before oil crashed, and then had the discipline to stay out before the fall crash as well, telling myself that i'd wait until the next president came into office and that got all sorted out before getting back in. all of which turned out to be right so i was pretty confident in my actions when i came back in this spring. maybe too confident :(. i had a close friend that needed a loan so had to withdraw half of what i started with this year for that, and then i bet wrong on oil prices a couple of months ago and lost half of what was left. then i got a bit greedy when i hit another upswing and lost half again (i trade options, so unlike the stocks which you can sit on when you make a mistake until they come back up, if you bet wrong on options, come third friday of every month, that money is gone).

that left me with about 11 thousand left in my account and no good ideas. not only no good ideas, but very hesitant after two big losses, which is not a good state of mind for someone who trades options. if you don't know what to do before your predictions happen, you're throwing good money after bad.

so i took a few weeks off to analyze what i did wrong, and make some new rules for myself, and jumped back in three weeks ago. at that time i had seen my account go from 40 thousand to 60, and then after the loan mentioned above and a string of losses i was down to just past 10. ouch.

welp, my first rule was to keep more in reserve to clean up mistakes should they be made again. so i jumped back in with 6 thousand, just over half of what i had left. in the past three weeks i've turned the 6 into 43 thousand, plus my reserve money is still there. so that's the loan i made covered even if that takes years to be repaid, the losses made back, and a few thousand profit on top of it all. and i'm pacing the floor waiting for monday because i'm about 90% sure i'm in exactly the right spot to double up again on the 15 thousand i still have invested next week.

the only regret is that i didn't more smartly analyze what i was doing months ago and apply the same rules then, if so lord knows how much i'd have made by now. but as they say back home, cest la vie.

and now that i see what i did wrong and see others doing the same things i'm doing when i look at the daily volumes, i can say with absolute certainty that there are billionaires being made by the hundreds right now. if people thought the rich were getting richer and the poor getting poorer before, it didn't hold a candle to now. there are people making ungodly amounts of money in these market conditions. i'm not sure what the policy ramifications of that will be next year, but i'm going to participate until then either way ;).

[David G Baker]

Neal,
You are fooling your self, you are actually sitting at the tables watching the roulette wheel spin. You had some good luck and picked a few good ones but just like casinos, the house always wins eventually.
Warren Buffet lost his pants during the big crash and he is considered one of the worlds leading experts in investing.
Keep rolling the dice and you will eventually end up a pauper.
There is definitely a lot of money to be made in investing but the smart money is usually invested in slower moving long term investments that are like the tortoise and hare story.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Hello,
Making money is easy.
Keeping what you made - that's the tough part ;).

[Phil Thien]

Hello,
Making money is easy.
Keeping what you made - that's the tough part ;).

Oh, you must know my wife. :eek:

[Pat Germain]

The fact is Neal will be sitting pretty in a few years while everyone who put their money into "guaranteed investments" won't even keep up with inflation.

There is a difference between trading commodities and playing roulette. A long as you're not playing with the kids' college funds, I say go for it!

[Ken Fitzgerald]

IMHO...you need a little of both. I had my account spread across some slow growers and some growth. When the market took the crash after 9/11, we weren't hurt nearly as bad as a lot of folks. I haven't made any fantastic wins but I haven't been looking for any windows to jump out of either.

I think the key is to be diversified. Don't have too much wrapped up into one kind of an investment.

[Tom Godley]

As long as you view your options trading as money that can be lost, than I too am on the side of enjoy. But, options are very dangerous -- especially in the current market.

I listen to people every day with opinions on market movements that are exactly the same as mine - but for completely different reasons. It is also interesting when one buys an option the reverse as some one else using the same market reasoning -- maybe using only different time parameters.

Many people are investing while others trade -- not to be confused.

I find it all great fun -- I have never enjoyed gambling.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

On just one asset I made better than a hundred grand in the week ending July 25 2009.

[Neal Clayton]

The fact is Neal will be sitting pretty in a few years while everyone who put their money into "guaranteed investments" won't even keep up with inflation.

There is a difference between trading commodities and playing roulette. A long as you're not playing with the kids' college funds, I say go for it!

well that's kinda the plan. i have net worth, and i have income, what i don't have is cash. and as we all know, income can go away at any time. i don't work for anyone else, i own pieces of commercial rental property so my income is more solid than most, but defaults happen all the time. so the plan is to learn enough about the markets over the current decade so that i can add cash to the net worth and income, and if the income falters, be able to earn enough with said cash to maintain my standard of living.


IMHO...you need a little of both. I had my account spread across some slow growers and some growth. When the market took the crash after 9/11, we weren't hurt nearly as bad as a lot of folks. I haven't made any fantastic wins but I haven't been looking for any windows to jump out of either.

I think the key is to be diversified. Don't have too much wrapped up into one kind of an investment.

you're right about investing, that kinda goes along with the difference in trading and investing. i'm trading. i've never been much on investing. but trading takes more time than most are able to spend, that's the catch.

i get up for the market open and make my decisions on what to get into every morning, when my crew comes in i'm out in the shop, then after i get a shower and lunch when they've left every afternoon i spend the last hour before the close seeing what has moved, why, and selling/hedging as necessary. then another two or three hours looking at charts and reading news after the close to try and figure out what to expect for the next morning. and the kicker being the crew works for me, so if i get an altert on my phone about a big move in something i've got, i can leave and check it out. someone with a day job would have a much tougher time keeping up, i think.

and then after the market closes instead of hitting the local watering hole or hitting the couch to watch american idol, i hit the charts and graphs ;). anyone who is willing and able to put the time in can do well, it's just a matter of how many other things you're willing to do without to work on it, just like any other business.


As long as you view your options trading as money that can be lost, than I too am on the side of enjoy. But, options are very dangerous -- especially in the current market.

I listen to people every day with opinions on market movements that are exactly the same as mine - but for completely different reasons. It is also interesting when one buys an option the reverse as some one else using the same market reasoning -- maybe using only different time parameters.

Many people are investing while others trade -- not to be confused.

I find it all great fun -- I have never enjoyed gambling.

i agree with this too. and you have to resign yourself to the fact that you won't always win. and when you lose there's no waiting on the sideline for the money to come back, it's gone. you just gotta get up, dust yourself off, and be smarter next time. i'm also not that big on gambling, it lacks choice, and to a lesser extent, the illusion of control (which is in fact an illusion but then we get into the psychological effects on markets and that's a whole other topic). we're not throwing darts at a wall, after all, there are methods to the madness, it's just a matter of spending the time to hone the methods, and managing to stay objective and emotionless about the application of those methods...

investing is an application of common sense, empirical wisdom, and resolve. trading is more a test of objectivity, discipline, and decisiveness, i think. which is why it's fun.

and i don't think we're fooling ourselves either. these market conditions make it easy for the layman to do well. when the recession sorts itself out and the markets are more on a gradual uptrend like they normally are, it'll be much more difficult to make huge returns in short amounts of time. but until then it's open season :D.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Hello Cliff,


On just one asset I made better than a hundred grand in the week ending July 25 2009.

Nice score!

I believe I had to work nearly three decades before I'd had a lifetime earnings of that much.:o

[David G Baker]

Anyone interested in investing in stock may want to contact me first to find out if I have money in that particular stock because if I do, the stock will tank and you will loose your investment. :D I have had such bad luck with individual stock that I moved all of my investments into mutual funds. I did pretty good until after October 2008, it went down around 35% before I moved it into money funds. I am considering getting back in using dollar cost averaging but I am still a little gun shy. I am too old to do much speculating.