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      06-15-2012, 09:50 AM   #1017
scorcherjf
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When you talk to anyone about their investments (online or in person) you generally only hear about their good trades. I was guilty of this behavior somewhat when I was younger and made riskier trades and was thrilled when they actually paid off. In hindsight it was essentially gambling. I had no idea how markets really worked (although I can't say I fully understand this even now but I'm trying!) and just really treated it like a casino. So yeah, I share some of your views about this thread and people talking about their investments in general but I also do find value in what people talk about since I can get a feel of general market sentiment from a wide variety of people. You can watch CNBC, talk with people in your office (I guess I'm lucky that I work in finance?), talk with friends, and also check online. As for me personally my trading is all model based so I guess reading this thread and talking to random people is quite useless for me but it's still fun to see what people are thinking nonetheless.

Anyway, I agree that the size of your portfolio does actually influence your trading behavior. Just comparing what I used to do to what I do now is starkly different because of the lessons learned and change in capital base. While I was somewhat of a "gambler" when I was younger, today everything is prototyped and tested in MATLAB/Java and similarly executed systematically. If it means anything to you my sharpe ratio is about 1.7 on a 32% 1 year return which I think is alright. It might be not so great for some but again, the capital base I feel is "sizeable" enough to not warrant riskier types of strategies. I guess everyone is different - size of their portfolio, types of strategies employed, etc. Long story short just soak up all the info you can and decide how to use it. =)
Quote:
Originally Posted by BayMoWe335 View Post
Seems like there are more than a few in this thread that make money every day...I guess they just don't post when they lose. Understandable. Don't take this post the wrong way. I pretty much stick to posting postitive news about my own investments, but I don't pretend I know what's going to happen on a daily basis.

But seriously, I like reading and contributing to the thread, but there seems to be quite a bit of "See, I told you this would happen" going on. Veteran investors know it's hard to stay in this game, let alone beat the averages consistently.

Just curious...how much are people investing? $1,000 portfolio? $10,000? $100,000? $500,000, $1,000,000+?

I always find it interesting that people talk percentages. "I am up 80% on this or that." Well, if I were investing $1,000, I'd be up 80% some of the time because I'm taking more risk. Buying 500 shares of BZH to bet home builders will surprise doesn't really get me excited or show that you are a good investor. I've got a co-worker that's always talking about doubling his $200 investment. Big deal. Would you bet the same if it was $20,000? Or the best of all time, play money investors. This completely takes 90% of investing skill out of the equation...psychology.

I somehow doubt people buying leveraged ETFs are investing any significant money on such a speculative bet. If you make money, good for you...but scale matters.
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