Part-time trading

G'day all traders

I'm planning to trade in my free time (at night time) since I'm working full time.

Should I trade long term ie. buy blue chip stocks / promising IPO stocks and own the shares rather than use leverage (CFD)

or

short term ie. day/swing trading or even scalping dow, ftse, dax indexes, FX and stocks listed in overseas markets, and of course using CFD to take advantage of no / zero commissions

As I only have small equity, with the First option, I might can only buy one or two companies share. The second option is more stressful, because I need to wath the price action constantly (but I might not trade every day)

I would like to hear your opinion, I got a feeling most fulltime traders start from small and trade part time in the beginning.

Thanks in advance
ak

Not much help here eh? Well im still newb but I would suggest putting your small investment in a bank account as cash is king at the moment. Then learn daytrading using index futures or forex(stocks have low liquidity) but use a demo or simulator for a year until you get good. Best learn it from a good training provider that teaches basic price patterns(trading off chart patterns, HH/HL, support/resistance/trendlines) so very very discretionary. Thats in my opinion how you can become a fulltime trader that can adapt to the market since a discretionary technical trading style using basic price patterns will always work in intraday time frames no matter what is the latest buzz in analysis aka market profile, DOM ratios etc. I was thinking of joining Puretick.com as they seem to really know this and daytrade based on simple ideas.

Never ever EVER play with real money until you can prove to yourself you got what it takes no matter how confident you are that FMG will go up after some positive news or how many times someone says they are making a killing doing this or that strategy and you should drop whatever your demoing and follow their strategy.

dojara said:

Not much help here eh? Well im still newb but I would suggest putting your small investment in a bank account as cash is king at the moment. Then learn daytrading using index futures or forex(stocks have low liquidity) but use a demo or simulator for a year until you get good. Never ever EVER play with real money until you can prove to yourself you got what it takes no matter how confident you are that FMG will go up after some positive news or how many times someone says they are making a killing doing this or that strategy and you should drop whatever your demoing and follow their strategy.

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you'd be fairly confident once they have shipped their iron ore to china one would imagine.. next goal would be to increase output per annum = increased earnings = potential dividend

Very easy to trade "Part time" these days.

Personally I have no aspirations to trade full time,couldnt think of anything more boring to do.Little interaction and successful trading is monotonous.
Profitable trading doesnt equate to sitting in front of a screen for some.Returning a couple of K a week is much easier from a $200,000 capital base than from $1,000

Many brokerages have conditional order platforms these days so you can set buy/exit/stops and walk away or go to sleep. Long or short.

Even the success of investing/trading part time at night will be largely determined by your personality. I much more enjoy the challenge of researching stocks than watching the charts go up and down. Perhaps you need to try both and decide what works for you?

angel said:

G'day all traders

I'm planning to trade in my free time (at night time) since I'm working full time.

Should I trade long term ie. buy blue chip stocks / promising IPO stocks and own the shares rather than use leverage (CFD)

or

short term ie. day/swing trading or even scalping dow, ftse, dax indexes, FX and stocks listed in overseas markets, and of course using CFD to take advantage of no / zero commissions

As I only have small equity, with the First option, I might can only buy one or two companies share. The second option is more stressful, because I need to wath the price action constantly (but I might not trade every day)

I would like to hear your opinion, I got a feeling most fulltime traders start from small and trade part time in the beginning.

Thanks in advance
ak

Click to expand...

What you decide to do will be a matter of personal preference- some people prefer FA to TA, and some think that longer term trend following is the way to go, and others look at shorter term stuff. And then some will combine them all. Horses for courses

If I was to go back to part time trading, I'd go with day trading the Euro session- Dax,FTSE, SMI and Euro/USD are all great fun for a bit of evening trading, and are open at reasonable hours for people here in OZ. The reason for doing so is because I'm already daytrading now- it wouldn't be that much of a change for me to switch over to trading Europe exclusively.

Your second option doesn't necessarily mean more stress - once you have built up a little bit of experience daytrading, it isn't necessarily any more stressful than trading longer term or investing if you are doing it correctly.

There is no such thing as zero comms- you may not pay any brokerage directly on index cfds, but you will end up paying for it(and then some) in the spread.

angel said:

G'day all traders


short term ie. day/swing trading or even scalping dow, ftse, dax indexes, FX and stocks listed in overseas markets, and of course using CFD to take advantage of no / zero commissions

As I only have small equity, with the First option, I might can only buy one or two companies share. The second option is more stressful, because I need to wath the price action constantly (but I might not trade every day)
ak

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See my post titled "Best markets to trade for a living - Full or part-time" in the Beginners Lounge section.
Index futures is ideal for you. Try the American ES or YM. For a start YM probably is perfect for you. You can make a nice return of your capital in just few minutes or within an hour. Do your paper trading first until you are confident of your set-ups and become profitable. Then, just trade 1 or 2 contracts until you get the hang of it. There are lots of FREE materials on the Web discussing how to trade these markets profitably. You dont have to waste money for a trading lesson.
Good luck.

baby_swallow said:

See my post titled "Best markets to trade for a living - Full or part-time" in the Beginners Lounge section.
Index futures is ideal for you. Try the American ES or YM. For a start YM probably is perfect for you. You can make a nice return of your capital in just few minutes or within an hour. Do your paper trading first until you are confident of your set-ups and become profitable. Then, just trade 1 or 2 contracts until you get the hang of it. There are lots of FREE materials on the Web discussing how to trade these markets profitably. You dont have to waste money for a trading lesson.
Good luck.

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Hahaha, have a look at the date of the post you quoted.

Pretty sure Angel will be a pro or bust by now, lol

Just had a look and Angel hasn't been on ASF since Feb last year.