On average how many stock positions do I need to have open at the same time to make a living off of them?
On average how many stock positions do I need to have open at the same time to make a living off of them?
16 Aug
9:39 am on August 16th, 2010
If that is really a question you are asking you shouldn’t even think about it. It’s not about the number it’s about how well you make money on the trades that you do make. For instance I made $130 on one trade today and lost $67 on another but the win or loss depends on how much I have invested and how much the stick rises or falls. No two days are the same so an average is a meaningless figure.
2010 will not be a year when a rising tide raises all boats so you’d better be very smart at picking stocks or you will lose. Even a seasoned trader might struggle to make 5% this year so let’s say you manage to meet that and want a living wage (say $40,000 to be conservative), you need $800,000 invested all year to make that. I’m guessing but it sounds like you probably don’t have that kind of dough and if you do you inherited it so don’t waste it.
You could trade options and increase your leverage and therefore returns and losses that way.
Don’t forget trading fees that eat away at gains and increase losses especially for small amounts invested.
Trading isn’t a way to make money for nothing so don’t go there unless you want to go broke.
10:37 am on August 16th, 2010
You are asking the wrong question.
In order to make money (conservatively) you need to have a lot of money in the bank available to you to trade off of – a LOT.
You make and lose money everyday. So, your wins will wipe out some of your debt one day and none of them next. It is an up and down process.
Peace.
11:01 am on August 16th, 2010
You need a -lot- of money. Plus it’s gambling. No one can predict intra day market volatility or direction. Big wall street firms N’ Hedge funds make money by not day trading but by trading for the long term using arbitrage. Don’t get involved unless you got millions.
11:14 am on August 16th, 2010
Day trading is a bad idea, especially in a volatile market. In the 90′s day trading was easy b/c the market was going up so fast that anyone could day trade. Hardly any of those day traders exist now, they all got wiped out.
11:45 am on August 16th, 2010
Learn to control risk on your trades in order to minimize losses. Then the question will not be how many tradews, but how much money you invest.
12:05 pm on August 16th, 2010
One successful one. That’s the tough part