If you mean trading platform, I don't. I have a fairly wide range of index funds that I rebalance every year or so and otherwise don't think about. I use Schwab for this but there are other good firms.

There was a time I traded mortgage-backs but that was for a firm with a fair amount of money. That's a very different sort of environment. I think for just about every individual with a day job the buy-and-hold index fund approach is the way to go.

But everyone will be tempted to gamble at some point and it's good to do that when you don't have much to lose and can recover from major losses, hence my advice to the OP.

ETA: Day trading isn't by any means a guaranteed way to lose money, anyone can get lucky. It's just that buy-and-hold offers a better risk/reward tradeoff and takes less work on top of that.

This post was edited on 9/28/12 at 7:35 pm

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Posted by acgeaux129

We are BR

Member since Sep 2007

15011 posts

Posted on 9/29/12 at 3:11 pm to foshizzle

quote:
ETA: Day trading isn't by any means a guaranteed way to lose money, anyone can get lucky. It's just that buy-and-hold offers a better risk/reward tradeoff and takes less work on top of that.

I agree completely and would add that it's pretty stupid to day trade with just $1000 because commissions are going to wipe out any gains you have. If you use AMTD which has one of the best mainstream platforms in TOS, you have to be able to swing for more than $20. If you want to go with one of the cheapest retail platforms in Scottrade, you have to make up for $14.

He should just dump it in index funds like you said, or possibly ETFs.

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Posted by Tigerstudent08

Lakeview

Member since Apr 2007

5776 posts

Posted on 10/1/12 at 4:12 pm to GeauxTigersGo

You must be pretty young. I would open up a roth IRA and try to max it out if you can muster up some more money.