Investing money...? Stocks, shares...?

[Gaeios(Graxlos)]

Roulette can make you rich. If you are lucky.

[delling]

Hehe, well, if a casino game has a 'system' and you know how to break it, then yes... it's the same as making money on the stock markets. Like counting cards, I guess.

I still want to invest in companies that I know a lot about. I also receive information quite early because of my job, so there's a chance that I can make trades ahead of the rest of the market.

Obviously that's optimistic thinking, though

[Goza]

Isn't that called insider trading and prohibited?

Well I always wondered how they prove it in order to sue folks.

[delling]

Ya, that's insider trading -- and I think it's only really detected if you're a large-scale stockbroker that obviously moves millions of stocks just before it makes a huge change

[treachery]

some ppl argue (and i would to some extent agree) that over a long period of time, the ONLY time you can make more money than the market (be it stocks, commodoties, interest rates, etc) is when you have more INFORMATION than the other participants on the market. its not always illegal, there are some creative use of game mechanics .

otherwise its just zero sum. you win some you lose some.

however, i do think one can make money from good risk management. this is the philosphy i use when I trade at work:

there is an old tale of some german investors who rolled a dice every morning (even numbers, buy the bund, which is the german treasury bill or odd numbers, sell the bund). then basically what you need to do is manage your risk: lets say you buy at 123, you will sell it at 122,5 or 125(numbers depending on technical analysis but for sake of argument). the idea here is to get out of a bad position fast and keep a good position longer. so even if you are 50/50 you should over time make money. it is a bit more complex but you get the idea.

this is the type of intra-day trading i do. however i dont roll the dice. id like to think that over time i am a little better than 50% in my bets (but probably not much hehe)

so i guess my tip for short term (intra day) trading is to exit bad positions fast (even if you really like the stock or whatever, be very consistent) and play aggressive when it turns out in your favour ( keep it longer, add on more risk, etc). this is of course hard to do on your spare time since you really need to keep track of alot of stuff all the time.

oh well, wall off text completed
gl

[Goza]

Did you just walltextcrit us saying
a) information is good
b) sell crap keep good stuff
?

[treachery]

haha I guess so

but you'd be suprised how many ppl keep bad positions and get ruined because "they really believe in the trade"

[delling]

http://www.ted.com/talks/laurie_santos.html

Why we lose money, using monkeys! (Very cool talk.)