re: Day/swing trading

Some of these rules apply to regular equity investing as well. I saw a lot of emotion on here specifically with respect to XOM as some folks core holding when oil started it's bumpy ride.

I have hidden conditional sells, a protective stop if you will, on (almost) everything, and this includes my core holdings, and monies inside of my retirement account. A couple of mutual funds I don't, and some stuff inside a SIMPLE IRA I don't. This takes any emotion, lack of discipline, and decision making out of my hands. On my buy and forget money, not even getting into what I have allocated as speculation. It is done automatically, and these orders are as hidden as a retail investor can hide orders. And that is not very well hidden, which brings me to one reason why I don't, and won't day trade again. The guys that do this for a living can essentially see what you're doing. Now, they don't know it's you specifically, but they can see the orders origination. In other words, TD Ameritrade, ETrade etc. Those orders get looked at depending on what security it is. I looked, so I guaranty guys that are good at this are looking. When Doc Fenton on here talked about SPX puts, I went and found his order, to the day, the hour, and the market maker. It ain't hard. He made it easy for me because he told me how many contracts, and what month. After that, it took maybe 15 minutes.

Emotion and lack of discipline have cost me more money, actually in every area of my life, than anything.

Back in the day, and that day is over for me, I used IB exclusively for this, and the guys that still trade seriously know the reasons why. It is probably the single best platform for serious trading, and it isn't even close. Perhaps there are some other, more recent platforms I'm unaware about, but just go ahead and play around with Interactive Broker's capabilities. They are significant, and they pale in comparison to what you would sometimes be competing against. I had a guy on here one time tell me I couldn't short a short. Wrong. Hard to borrow shares? Rarely an issue. Want to trade credit default swaps and future's on them? Yep, you can do this. Single stock futures? Easy. Probably too easy. We would joke about guys on Thinkorswim, E Trade etc. You can literally see their strategy on Level II, and sometimes stop them out for fun. Especially in commodities futures, but easily enough with equities as well. Anyone can see the MM's, and if you know who makes markets for whom, it is clear as day. And clear as day even on E Trade L2.

But IB will liquidate your account immediately to cover a margin call. As in no telephone call, no email. You're out. They don't play. They provide portfolio margin, so your leverage is greater than a regular margin account if you qualify.

I'd just suggest if you think you can't buy and sell MMM at 3AM as an example, you'd be incorrect, and you'd better educate yourself more thoroughly before stepping into a lion's den with raw steak hung around your neck. If you think there aren't guys doing this that literally don't sleep for days on end, you'd also be incorrect. If you want to trade bonds as an example, you are going to get a serious and expensive education quickly. Banks are jerk offs, and they will kill you trying to trade bonds. Kill you. You're competing against computers that have predictive capabilities. You're competing against guys trading in dark pools. If I can route trades to dark pools on IB, do you really think Bank of America, as an example, doesn't have access to even darker, dark pools that aren't price reporting? That's documented. Banks got is some trouble doing precisely this in the last several years.

Now I think you can still trade. And I think you can do this successfully. Have maybe 51% winners as opposed to 49% losers. But I don't think most guys stand a chance being a pattern day trader as defined in FINRA rules.

Day trading for retail guys really ended over a decade ago. You can do some swing trading, some trading, momentum trading, but my opinion is day trading is not recommended for someone not on a platform like IB, and not recommended for someone who doesn't know how to place a contingent order, or something more sophisticated that a stop order.

I'm probably more aggressive than most on here, and yet in the BOIL Is Predictable thread I said over and over again, don't play with the leveraged ETFs. Don't buy notes, and if you don't know the difference between an ETF and an ETN, you'd better do some research. No credit risk in a Deutsche Bank ETN. Senior debt, but have we really already forgotten Lehman?

Anyway, have some fun. Do some trading. But I'd not go get a portfolio margin account at Interactive Brokers and try to beat some German banker who doesn't sleep. It probably won't end well.

Edit. Just for fun I logged onto my IB account and looked for dark pools. I found this instead.

LINK

Yeah, I want to get in a day tradeable security and try to scrap competing against a guy using this. And this is something a retail guy like me can use. Imagine what the pros use against you.