一家之言：散户赚钱之道（ZT）

Since the vast majority of emails I’ve gotten recently have come from people who are unwilling to read through all my blog posts, too poor/cheap to afford my DVD or too lazy to pick up my book to better understand my strategies, this is the post that’s gonna make everything real simple-like. Learning and profiting over the past decade, here’s what I’ve come to believe (in no specific order).

1. I love, use and recommend Thinkorswim as my broker. Yes, I get compensated for referring people, but I’d never endorse a product I didn’t use myself—best customer service, great tools, negligible commissions and great borrows on hard-to-borrow stocks I love shorting—all the way down to the $1-2 range, yes you CAN short under $5 (there’s no SEC rule against it, some brokers just suck).
2. The vast majority of investments and trends are unpredictable, be choosy.
3. So, I stay fully liquid the vast majority of the time, constantly stalking potential prey.
4. Every day it’s just random market noise, the best plays come about rarely, anywhere from 1-5 per month, focus on these and your odds of success go waaaaaaaay up.
5. I don’t care whether the stock market goes up or down, as long as there’s volatility.
6. Since Wall Street is so full of idiots and many companies will fail, short selling, or betting a stock will drop in price, is a very useful strategy and my specialty.
7. Diversified long-term investing might work, but it can NEVER lead to my kind of gains—even with all my mistakes, 60 times my original investment, after 40%-taxes and hella fun spending a few hundred grand, in 9 years.
8. There are specific points/prices during which the odds of predictability can be in your favor, that is when to enter a trade.
9. These windows of opportunity are created by market mechanisms like hype (short squeezes), manipulation (very clean charts), stop losses (getting taken out), volume (how many day traders are involved)—that’s why I write about that instead of more mainstream but less useful crap like earnings (varying expectations, can easily be fudged), industry potential (complex/unpredictable) and profit margin trends/product popularity (have fun researching for months).
10. I play stocks, not companies, companies and their stocks are two separate beings entirely.
11. I aim to make 50 cents to $2/share, usually 10-20% gains within minutes, hours or days, as I’ve found those sized gains to be the most predictable.
12. I take my gains quickly, if the pattern continues, I can always re-enter (lesser so due to the ridiculously anti-American pattern day trading rule).
13. I take my losses quickly (I’ve obviously been wrong, can’t risk being big-time wrong…ever).
14. There is a correlation between the economy and stock prices, but the time lags involved make it irrelevant for trading.
15. There is a correlation between business and stock performance, but the time lags involved make it irrelevant for trading.
16. I stick to stocks because that’s where all my experience/success is.
17. I stick to the short-term because it’s less complex and more predictable.
18. I stick to microcrap and smallcrap stocks because they are the most affordable/volatile/inefficient/predictable.
19. Microcraps and smallcrap stocks have unique qualities—such as paid for research reports and low dollar volume traded, making this niche ideal for small-time investors and traders.
20. Microcraps and smallcrap stocks continually need to raise $, they will forever be hyping themselves up.
21. Microcraps and smallcrap companies usually fail. Probable hype + probable failure= Probable profits from shorting into that hype.
22. Stick to stocks in play, filled with plenty of fickle day traders, great for quick surges and reversals.
23. Never account for more than a few percent of daily trading volume.
24. I should go both long and short but I’ve done too much research for my own good so I have problems buying crap companies because I know how bad they are.
25. I have good theories, but I am not a great trader/timer (exemplified by THIS trade. (stock is now 44% lower one trading day later!)
26. Since I know I’m a bad timer, I stick to volatile stocks—think 30-300% daily moves—their large moves leave plenty of room for error.
27. I don’t use leverage because no matter how sure I am, it risks disaster.
28. I trust nobody and no company, better safe than sorry.
29. “Gurus” and “market experts” are liars, frauds and marketers–I’m a marketer because a.) it’s gonna be fun to see if my strategy can create another millionaire b.) the lack of scalability of my strategy make it a waste of time for me to keep it to myself–call me greedy, but I think I can make more cutting through all the BS out there and helping traders not lose $, for once and c.) thanks to the combo effect of boring/uncreative finance people and my big mouth, ain’t nobody else willing to say what’s needed to get EVERYONE to understand this stuff!
30. The financial media is comparable to the WWF, which is good, you can profit off of the suckers who believe what they hear from these entertainers (Cramer is The Rock).
31. There’s far more idiocy and corruption on Wall Street than you ever imagined, which is good, you can profit from it.
32. Many people are smarter and better informed than me, I don’t want to compete with them (these guys make big money so they stay out of my penny stock niche, whewww!)
33. Without using leverage or taking on ridiculous risk, my strategy can only yield a few hundred thousand to a few million in profits per year, respect these limitations. (And that’s if there are enough opportunities, some years I might only make tens of thousands (especially with TIM under $25k).
34. Random stock picks are useless, even when proven correct—if you want random gut-based bets, go to the casino, there you’ll at least get free drinks.
35. The key to long-term success is profiting from predictable patterns rooted in human nature.
36. I make solid profits over time by being right 60-70% of the time.
37. Patterns mutate, but the awesome Supernova (as detailed extensively in my DVD)—from which I’ve made nearly all my money, both from the long and short side—remains more or less the same.


From http://www.timothysykes.com/