3.5 years day/swing trading. Still a rookie! :) Options next?

[Sytes]

I'm a rookie. Yep, and the market reminds me of this when I start thinking otherwise. :W: My intent is to share my growing "in"-experience to field input from those of you with more experience and to see if others might also hobby or do this for a living. I've found learning from others mistakes and gains is epic with my own learning curve.
A brief review:
Looking back at my first Hunt Talk post on market trading, I've put in a few years since getting my feet wet... At first, I paid for my trading education via loss though the hard knocks education is paying off. I've recouped my original losses and currently sitting at $3,300 in the green this year still working with $7500 and still sitting at a restricted 3 turnarounds per week. It keeps my day trading "in check", for now. Haha! Between day trades for $25-250 here and there and working Earnings release buy/sell & shorts, It has paid for some "extra" toys.

A couple friends and I yammer back and forth and compete over our trading hobby and we're venturing into a little bit deeper water. We're spreading our wings, so to say, dabbling with futures and forex and I want to enter (learn) Options.
I believe I'll stick with my current platform, TradeKing that I've found as a favorite for the price per trade and functional tools. This narrowed down from the following, Sharebuilder, Scottrade and TDAmeritrade. TD Ameritrade's Think or Swim is a very nice platform though the price per share is a royal bite in the ass when dealing with the small Hobby daily gains!

Seems the reviews show TradeKing as a quality platform for Options. So... With that said and a few "Make Billions" Youtube videos under my belt, I am interested to hear your thoughts on skimming a fraction of the fat off the stock market, still keeping my day job.

 

[Sytes]

While looking to venture out of the beginner stock buy/sell world and start refining the % lost to commission, trade cost and taxes, I've viewed a few "how to / Beginner 101" webinar/Youtube videos re: ETF's.

These seem a bit more daunting as there are more variables involved and the choices seem pretty extensive. The potential "Counter Party" risks is spooky. Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy as an example, had it's hands in ETF holders and that turned to large loss. It would appear, to this rookie, that sticking with large cap holds significant safety over the various other choices. Gold holds valuable opportunity from the tax standpoint though I caught a bit of info that gold, by IRS standards may be viewed as "collectibles" thus bear possible 28% of its value to taxes(?).

Seems ETF's require a lot of knowledge when viewing from afar. I suppose the same could be said about the stock market in general. Anyone work with ETFs able to offer some insight as to a good start point to get feet wet would be interesting to learn from. I'm interested in the ability to work a mutual fund position though on an Intraday basis. My impression leads me to begin, as mentioned above, with large caps and will stick with the TradeKing platform. I'll dabble with this and see how it goes. If this is grossly off point, please share your thoughts. I love to learn and the more learned - more money made. Learning itself is a margin win in it's own right.

Where has Mtn West been hiding? I don't think one's work/hobby market trading strategies are the same as ones hunting honey hole though I could be wrong. We all know the risks involved when dealing with the personal opinions so no disclaimers are really necessary. It is opinion after all.

Feel free to PM me if that works better for you.

 

[RobG]

Hi Sytes - you may recall I think it is extremely difficult to come out ahead over an extended period of time actively trading compared to buying and holding an index fund. That said, I'm not sure why an ETF would be more risky. They are simply a bundle of stocks (or bonds) so in general they are more diversified and less volatile than a single stock. The multiple stocks mean you stand less of a chance of having enormous gains, but you also have less of a chance of enormous losses. The losses hurt more - a 50% loss requires a 100% gain to recover so to come out ahead you need to minimize the losses and diversification helps do that.

You can buy total market ETFs (the ultimate diversification) but you would give up the chance of tripling your money in a year. You could also buy a very concentrated ETF and maybe you will be up by a factor of 10 in a year. Or down. TAN, which just holds solar stocks, is an example. It is down a factor of 10 from its peak in 2008. After decades of buying and holding broad indexes I decided to dump some play money into that fund this year. Maybe it will explode with the new administration or maybe big coal will put a knife in the industry.

 

[RobG]

You can buy total market ETFs (the ultimate diversification) but you would give up the chance of tripling your money in a year. You could also buy a very concentrated ETF and maybe you will be up by a factor of 10 in a year. Or down. TAN, which just holds solar stocks, is an example. It is down a factor of 10 from its peak in 2008. After decades of buying and holding broad indexes I decided to dump some play money into that fund this year. Maybe it will explode with the new administration or maybe big coal will put a knife in the industry.

Yeah, if I could just go ahead and undo that idea it would be great. It turned out that solar stopped looking like a good investment after trading hours on Nov 8. That's life...

 

[Fire_9]

Just like Ruger and smith&wesson stock....

 

[Sytes]

Made a nice 25 minute chunk of $ off of NVDA... I went into gold premarket after the Trump victory and quickly sold shares of BTG after identifying the Market did not dump as the "media" fear mongering projected.. Lost a bit there though NVDA earnings was a very nice piece of $$$.

edit added: reading up on ETF's and working the Long Calls (for future earning potentials out there) and reading / watching education related to "Iron Condor" Options... All learning though making $$$ along the line.

On the NVDA note, I sold for a $5.75 gain from 200 shares. Had I held it for today - I would be sitting at $18.00+ Well, happy to make the $1150 though to think... that could, should and would have been a great play Triple ! Ouch though to complain about the nice win???