Firstly I'd like to thank all the people posting on this forum for the wealth of information. It has been a pleasure to read.
I have been reading quite a few books on trading and reading this forum almost daily for some time now. I also traded indexes using finspreads for about 6 months.
I have come to the conclusion that the odds are really stacked against me. I like the idea of trading and I'm not adverse to losing money but I'm starting to wonder whether my time and effort would be better spent elsewhere for eg building up a business.
However I would still like a long term approach to take advantage of compounding. Whether I trade or not I would still like this. I would also like to be a bit more active than just putting my money in an index tracker and coming back to it 20-30 years later.
I have played around with buy and hold using small leverage on historic prices of the dow. It was yahoo data so I know its not the best. Leveraging up to half of the market produced some nice results over time and didn't take me out. I'm pretty sure if I had used it on the NASDAQ I would not have survived the 2000 - 2002 years. I'm also thinking of adding a buy the dips strategy using something simple like EMA 100 or longer.
To protect my profits I would like a way of scaling out. Unfortunately I can't think of an approach that works. Is the only way to do this to just levergage up to a level that you can always "ride out" ?
Many Thanks.
Max
I have been reading quite a few books on trading and reading this forum almost daily for some time now. I also traded indexes using finspreads for about 6 months.
I have come to the conclusion that the odds are really stacked against me. I like the idea of trading and I'm not adverse to losing money but I'm starting to wonder whether my time and effort would be better spent elsewhere for eg building up a business.
However I would still like a long term approach to take advantage of compounding. Whether I trade or not I would still like this. I would also like to be a bit more active than just putting my money in an index tracker and coming back to it 20-30 years later.
I have played around with buy and hold using small leverage on historic prices of the dow. It was yahoo data so I know its not the best. Leveraging up to half of the market produced some nice results over time and didn't take me out. I'm pretty sure if I had used it on the NASDAQ I would not have survived the 2000 - 2002 years. I'm also thinking of adding a buy the dips strategy using something simple like EMA 100 or longer.
To protect my profits I would like a way of scaling out. Unfortunately I can't think of an approach that works. Is the only way to do this to just levergage up to a level that you can always "ride out" ?
Many Thanks.
Max