Are you ever tempted to do day trading?

I did a bit of day trading in the 1980’s and 1990’s; I had moderate success.

To be successful, day trading requires a lot of time and attention. And, it also requires discipline, in that one must have a firm idea of when to take a position, and when to close the position.

Brokerage fees are even cheaper than “inexpensive”. TD Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, and Fidelity now have zero commissions on US equity, ETF, and options transactions, matching RobinHood which introduced free trading two years ago.

I have thought about it, but to do it (and make money) I would need to quit my day job and spend a lot of time on analysis. And have much better tools than my broker supplies me.

Day trading is great if you can spend the time to do it “right”. I can’t.

Yes, but never had enough money to risk in day trading. Also if I had the money not sure if I would have the time to do it myself and I would only do it myself, no broker.

No. My dad and brothers indulged in that.Seems stressful to me. XD

Not really. It is a form of gambling and I don’t want to throw my money away. It would be OK if you could be reasonably certain of a bull market but there are too many uncertainties in the world just now to be sure of anything.

I might if I was married and my wife and I were swingers…

I think the market is too chaotic to execute rational day-trading strategies. In my opinion, the market can be inefficient at times, and I prefer to buy when the stock price is substantially below it’s value and sell when I think it’s above it. I’ve had luck with this strategy, but it’s certainly more risky than just buying and holding an S&P 500 index fund.

The idea that it’s as simple of buying at the lower end end of a range and selling at the upper range is kind of nutty. There are neural network-based ai stock bots trained on historical stock market data that would easily be able to exploit such a simple pattern if it were profitable to do so.

I have been doing it by buying and selling options based upon the S&P 500. (SPY)

The market has been swinging wildly up and down every time our Tweeter-in-Chief fiddles with his thumbs. Rather than wring my hands I decided I will put my play money where my mouth is and figure there will be some new “exciting” event every 3 weeks. I aim for something 6–8 weeks down the road. I usually have a bet or 2 looking for an up and bet or 2 looking for a down. When one wins I just wait a little and the other wins. He has not disappointed me yet.

Let’s make up something as an example: He will say he made a deal with China. So the market will pop up 300 points. Then people will realize he lied and there was no deal so it will drop 300 points. He will be mad a China so he will fiddle with a tariff so the market will drop. But he does not want his party to lose an election so he will say (falsely) he reduced the tariff so the market will bounce, until people realize the tariff was not going to be applied anyway… etc.

I would lose if he ever matured or someone took away his device – and I don’t see either of those things happening soon.

Look what was just announced. There’s the price shock for today – and maybe Monday
”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday outlined the first phase of a deal to end a trade war with China and suspended a threatened tariff hike, but officials on both sides said much more work needed to be done before an accord could be agreed.

The emerging deal, covering agriculture, currency and some aspects of intellectual property protections, would represent the biggest step by the two countries in 15 months to end a tariff tit-for-tat that has hit financial markets and slowed global growth.”

I am guessing that on Monday prices will come down a bit.