Swinging BOTH ways.......

Very recently, I clicked on one of those pesky ads on Yahoo! Finance page,
whilst smoldering about market shifts and the facts of life as pertains to trading
the market. Keep in mind, I've been trading for sometime now. I wouldn't say I'm
a pro, or make any claims to be some sort of economist, but I have learned just about
all the things NOT to do when trading the market. I refuse to believe that Buy & Hold
is a strategy at all, unless your investments are meant to stay in place for eternity.
Eventually, if your choices are good, buy & hold will provide steady dividends and through
prudent reinvestment, your money will grow and regardless of price, you will end up ahead
of the game. I dont think that way. I like to trade for INCOME. The market has changed in the last two years to be a traders market. I think this is in part to the deployment of trading software, provided by both retail brokers and put in use by larger banking/investment firms.
Most of this software analyzes price points and volumes and then makes a determination of
buy/sell points based on this data, with the obvious disclaimers that say if you lose your ass, its not their fault, because you didnt look close enough. ANYWAY, I clicked on an ad for Sogotrade, a discount broker based in New York city. At first glance, it looked attractive. The commissions are $3.00 per side with no minimum account fees or start up fees or any of the burdensome
crap that pisses you off. Nice. Next thing I notice is that Sogotrade is a self clearing broker, which eliminates third party clearing, a benefit in that cost savings for the broker is passed to the customer in the form of lower fees and trade commissions. Nice.
Third, after deeper investigation, I found that Sogotrade has advanced procedures in place for account log in security and account safety. Being a victim of identity theft myself, this is VERY nice.
I opened an account and after an annoying period of waiting for account set up to activate, and my security documents to process, I funded the account and started trading.
WOW. Is all I can say. The system works well, I was awarded 100 free trades with a measly 30 day expiration ( thats the only negative really) and short sales go off without a hitch.
This is the crux of today's blog entry. Trading BOTH DIRECTIONS. For anyone who dabbles in the market, one thing to keep in mind is this, predicting whether or not a stock will go up is for
fortune tellers and suckers. This market DOES not trade on fundamentals or hardly any of the traditional things your economy professors preach. Trading volatility is the key to success. VOLATILITY. As long as the market is open, you can make money. The other key to winning is knowing what your trading. Know the industry, know the players. Its hard to draft a fantasy team that wins if you just guess. You need to know who and what. The difference is, you dont care if your star 1st baseman bats .400 or goes 0 fer 273, as long as he gets HIS TURN AT BAT.
Translation, as long as the market is open, it will vacillate. Thats all we need. Want to know more? Comment with questions and we can discuss. Have a great day people, and stay safe.