Helping me decide

[AntP]

Hi guys,

Introduced myself over in the respective thread 'Introduce Yourself'.

I'm Ant from the Midlands. I currently run a side business from my 9-5 job to try and make a little side money. It's an eBay based business but due to the nature of products sold, very little profit, you're looking £1 per item. So of course, to sell enough to make a decent living, I need to be selling a fair few hundred a week.

It's in between being too busy to cope after work some nights. But then not busy enough to go all in and leave work.

So i'm looking at trading. I have the drive, I am great at money management and when gambled in the past for nights (such as a boxing night) I know when it's time to call it a day. Blow my own trumpet I guess with money management but I guess what I mean is I know my risk factor, understand what I can and can't do and many times have been called a tight-****!

I'll be reading, reading and reading some more and of course going through many demo accounts before trading my real hard earned cash.

I have read this thread: http://www.trade2win.com/boards/new-trade2win/30634-should-i-trade-stocks-futures-forex-etc.html.

And would like to get from you guy & gals, what do you trade and why did you decide to trade that?

I have been reading up on Forex and something I would like to get into. Especially as it goes hand in hand with what I do (import).

However, the end of last year I dipped into a demo Stock account and logging back into that this evening, I would have made a few hundred quid over the last couple of months had it been real money. The only thing that puts me off there, is they were given to me (someone at work said X Y Z will go up so I set it up on a demo). I don't actually know why they would have, so even with that, I'd been starting from scratch and learning what influences the market.

So yeah, help appreciated. I know you can't tell me what I should trade, but listening to a few that trade, have traded a while and why they picked that market would be great.

Thanks, Ant

 

[tomorton]

I have a spread-betting account that lets me trade stocks and forex, plus a whole range of other stuff. Last year I was almost 100% trading forex but since the long-lasting forex trends I would otherwise follow have stalled I have gone back to stocks. As the major stock markets are over-extended and what were uptrends are now ranges, I am moving back into forex.

In both cases I prefer the larger entities as the spreads are narrower, position charges lower so the overheads are lower.

Long-term trends are the most objective "pattern" to recognise and highly reliable. they are easy to enter with lots of entry signals to allow you to get long in an uptrend or short on a downtrend. Its uncomplicated though maximising gains and hanging onto them is hard (you personally should do alright in this respect).

I regret to say I steer clear of fundamental / economic analysis though possibly my trading would benefit from this, but I do favour positions in line with either the major indices for stocks or what the majority of base currency pairs are doing in forex - i.e. I don't want to be long in stocks when the Dow is dropping or long USD v's something when USD v's everything else is in a downtrend.

I never enter trades or orders during the London market's hours, don't need to.

 

[new_trader]

Stick with what you know

My 2¢: In 5 years time you will regret that you didn’t stick to your eBay business and try to expand that instead. But I’m not going to argue the issue, I’d rather you update us here in 5 years time if this forum still exists.

 

[AntP]

@tomorton, thanks for your input and taking the time to reply. Much appreciated.

@new_trader, I did mention my eBay store as I thought there would be a few who say to continue to grow this. My worry, sales are up and down and the frustration comes when you have sooooo many Chinese sellers, importing and shipping straight from a fulfilment centre in the UK but selling at a China price. Of course, you have people that would prefer to know their product is sold by someone they can talk to, many do not care as long as it's cheaper. It's only going to get worse. Amazon is in the pipeline and my own website is designed just not live yet. Tried it before and the amount of spend you need again outways the profits. But there are a few new ideas I have for this - more traditional marketing.

The reason I thought about 'learning' to trade i'll say is so that if things dry up I can still go into something to make that extra money. Preferably when i'm in the Maldives (i'm joking with this, haha). As i'll be learning as I go, I may not actually trade until another 5 years down the line. I'd just rather learn about one thing, like FX or Stocks as opposed to jumping ship every article.

If that makes sense?