JayPrime

Sorry if it sounds confused! In reality I made more trades after my first trade. I posted my positions. I would consider them trades in plural as opposed to all just one trade. Or am I wrong? Thanks

Options... I agree because the OP is very young and he mine as well try to grow his capital rapidly. From what I can tell so far, options provide the best reward for the amount of capital you have to risk. (Low capital = still potential for large rewards)

62% nice! I'm 25 and I made my first trade last Wednesday and I posted my positions in my other thread. I turned $35000 into over $50000 in just the last few days. My first trade was last Wednesday. That said, I got very lucky with the timing. What has happened so far is what I considered to be a likelihood of less than 10% (due to the timing). Overall, I had confidence in my trades because I knew the price of gold is going up. I just wasn't sure if it was going to putter around for the next few months before doing so. It looks to me like it will be heading back to around $1400 an ounce over the next few months. So I'm actually going to hold my positions for a little while longer until gold tops $1350 or until I see a major indicator that it is not going to reach $1350 any time soon. I'm trading options of course, with some stocks that track gold. My advice. Never trust anyone else with your money. Learn as much as you can RIGHT NOW because you are still young and the knowledge you learn about the markets right now will pay dividends over the course of the rest of your life. Don't entrust some fool with your money when you are at the optimal age to learn yourself and make lots of money in the future. Even if you take some losses while you are learning, you'll make it all back and then some in your future if you keep working at it. I won't give you advice about trading because I'm brand new, and my recent victories are mostly luck. But the advice I gave you is not about trading. It's about life. And if you ever want to retire early, the odds are against you if you entrust your money to someone else to decide what to do with it. Even if they are brilliant, they are quite restricted in what they can really do for you because they can't take the risks you can. And about the twitter channel. I'm glad it has worked well for you so far, but take a step back and think about WHY it has worked. You might realize that it has potential to reap you far more profits, or that it has just been lucky so far. Best of luck! That's my $0.02.

I agree with you. I've got my own self-designed system for managing risk. As long as everyone manages their risk to the level that is comfortable with them, then who am I to say they are making a mistake? If you trade, you are a risk taker. Period. Please don't take the high and mighty stance that you are better at managing risk when it is all relative like I say above. If you are over 40, you might not want to take the amount of risk I am taking. But note, that I never mentioned what my stop limit was, so how do you even know what risk I'm taking? I can say for sure that due to my stop loss I will very likely end up in the money on these trades since I'm already deeply in the money.

I agree, I'm being stupid. I really can't defend myself in these positions, except for the ownership of YRI which I think is at excellent value right now. I'm not going to pull out though. If I get burned real badly with these bets, I'll simmer down. (It's money I can afford to lose.)

Thanks SIUYA and everyone else. I've been given excellent information and good leads and I am quite happy with the community here. I decided to take the summer off from day trading and just ease myself into it. There's too much information and I need to ease myself into it. I don't have the time to really day trade either since I'm in the process of starting my own company. Someone was interested in my positions, so here is a rundown of what I am in: Options: GLD - 20 x CALL @$117 Aug. 2nd purchased at $3.60 GLD - 20 x CALL @$117 September 21st purchased at $4.45 BOFI - 5 x PUT @$45 October purchased at 3.00 Stocks: 1500 shares of CGL.TO @ Avg. Price of $10.70 1000 shares of YRI.TO @ Avg. Price of 9.70 As for BOFI, I plan to buy 100 shares of BOFI when it hits $40. You might find it strange that I bought 5 PUT options against it when I want to own it... Well, because my strategy is aggressive and rather than selling naked puts, I figured... If I am sure it will go down (and hence why I'm not buying now) then why not just profit from it going down? I might trade in and out of CGL.TO, but I think I'll be holding YRI.TO for about 1.5 years. That's it for me. And yes, I'm up a bit on the options right now

3. Currently stuck on this one right now. I opened up with Questrade only to find that they have a terrible platform, and they don't have a data provider that will work with something like ninja trader. Investigated Sierra Charts: Awful (but functional) interface. I have to figure out a good data provider. I am hoping to get futures, equities, and spot prices of gold all in one. Investigated Ninja: I like the scripting feature. Have same problem with data provider. It could just be me, but I feel like these platforms (especially Sierra) are heavily influenced by Forex. As I indicated, I really don't understand Forex and doubt that I ever will. I'm hoping I can get by without having to understand too much about Forex. 2, 9, 10, 11. Thanks for the info it really is appreciated!

Thanks for the tips Seeker! 3. I'm going to check NinjaTrader out thanks a lot! 5. I think my question was unclear. To state it in a different way, I'm asking what types of charts are used for what? Is there a concise cheat sheet that someone knows of? For example if I take a 50 day moving average chart mixed with a 20 day moving average chart and look for where the two lines cross, what is the point of such a thing? As a day trader you have to decide when to get in and get out, so there must be a dozen or so specific types of charts you use to get specific types of info before you figure out your target stop limit, sell limit, optimal buy, etc... 7. Thanks for the confirmation. I'm long on gold and I want to own some GLD for potentially 1.5 years. The funny thing about GLD is that it DEPENDS on the US dollar going down. So basically, it seems to me that as I win in the stock, I lose in the currency exchange. A Canadian buying GLD is indeed a loss/loss situation no? Luckily I do know of some Canadian ETFs like CGL, however, its far inferior to GLD in terms of liquidity and thus I can't do covered calls, etc... 9. Sweet! This is actually one of my most valued questions. I really must find out all the important dates. I also don't know much about futures, so I will learn about them. 10. I could be wrong, but I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of options except for how they are handled if I allow it to expire in my possession. I'm thinking because sometimes I might just want to buy the underlying stock, rather than sell the CALL contract. I know how time decay, implied volitility, etc... relates to the price. Thanks for the help again, and happy trading! I'm just going to do an aggressive portfolio and hope for the best. Setting expectations at 100% every 6 months is at least a goal right?

Oh well thanks Wizard I suppose I do know more than I thought I did... Everything I know is just from what I've gathered from reading the first paragraph of financial news. I am seriously new to this stuff and just opened my discount brokerage account Thursday. Then did some trading Friday without really knowing what I was doing. Perhaps some of my questions above are less essential or don't have straight forward answers, but I do consider each of them knowledge gaps. I really don't for certain know the answer to any of them yet.

Hi, I'm a young person looking to turn $35k into $2.5 million within 3 years. ---Another way of saying that is "Hi, I'm a moron who'd like to risk all his money..." Based on my 10 minutes of actually doing research to try to come up with a good strategy, I realized that there's some gaps in my knowledge that I need some help filling. Please feel free to answer one or all of my questions, or just chip in with whatever tidbit you can. Please just reference (by number) the question you are answering. Thanks! 1. Can someone please send me to (what you would consider) an informed article about a) What could cause deflation in general? b) What contemporary economic factors could drive deflation in the next decade? 2. Why would Yamana Gold Inc. (YRI:TSE) fall 2% and Yamana Gold Inc. NYSE fall 4% on the same day. The only difference I can see is the exchange (and thus the currency) that it is traded. I don't understand why one would fall twice as much as the other. Is there an opportunity for arbitrage in here somewhere? 3. What charting software do you use? I prefer web based, but I find that Google Finance doesn't support candlesticks and other things like commodity spot prices, and gold, etc... I would be willing to pay a small amount (<$30 per month) to get real time excellent charts. 4. When some A-hole declares that he predicted AAPL would fall %200 and so I should buy MSFT because he predicts it will go to $100, what is the FASTEST way to check the historical records to make sure the article isn't complete BS. (In general I don't follow peoples stock tips, but there are few economists who I think are ahead of the curve and I just find it is so time consuming to fact check). This could be as simple as me getting a good charting software. (Plus I gotta also make sure to find the dated publications where the predictions were made, but that's probably never going to be fast.) 5. An article (or cheat sheet) where the different types of charts are categorized and explained to show how they can be used to make extrapolations. For example, SRI Pivot Chart, Candle Sticks, etc... I just need a quick cheat sheet type thing. 6. Where can I get real time TSE? (Toronto Stock Exchange) quotes for free? Or anything better than a 15 minute delay would be great... 7. Can someone explain my currency risk exposure if I buy a U.S. stock? I'm a Canadian and right now CAN/USD is trading 0.95. I think CAN is undervalued and I don't want to buy USD at this juncture. So is it impossible for me to buy U.S. stocks then? I believe I am correct and buying U.S. stocks will force the bad conversion rate on me, meaning that if the USD were to fall say -10% then my stock would have to increase by +10% just for me to break even. I've opened positions in options on U.S. stocks because I don't see as much currency exposure with options. Not sure if I am taking the right approach... Basically I have some US stocks I want to buy, but I'm extremely bearish on the USD long term. 8. Is this a good forum for the types of questions I have? What are some other forums that are filled with active users who day trade and are friendly and like to give advice. (Please only reference forums with a decent Q/A interface. I don't want to scroll around and search for things because the website was poorly designed and not really designed for a question answer format. 9. I need a calendar of important business dates, macro dates, exchange holidays, and if possible also seasonal indicators for when certain commodities are historically in the most demand. For example, when is the quarterly report date for businesses? (Do they all report or the same day?) What dates do the central banks announce that they are going to interfere in the free market economy? (Are their specific dates?) When is Fiscal year end? When does the government announce it is laying off 200 workers? Typical dates for these types of market altering events. I need a calendar that lists both US and Canada. 10. What happens if I buy and hold an option until expiry? Is it possible for the damn thing to just expire and die and even if it is ITM and I get NOTHING for it? Or will the market maker give me my money when it expires as long as I'm holding it? Or will I get a phone call from somebody saying "How would you like to excercise" the contract? 11. If I am looking at options quotes and I see strikes at $1 dollar increments for a stock below $10 is it possible that my charting software / discount broker is just crappy and not showing me the real list of strikes? I don't get how a stock under $10 could possibly be striked at $1 increments. 50 cents seems much more reasonable... That's it for now folks. Thanks very much for any help you can provide. I have open positions already despite not knowing the answer to these questions, but that is because I'm a moron who likes to jump in and learn the fast way. So far I'm making money because I'm a lucky bastard, but I need to address a lot of problems before I start losing money. Just as an FYI, the only thing I've so far been considering to trade is options and stocks. I'm staying as far as possible from bonds, and I don't think I can devote any of my portfolio to long term yielders like high dividend payers because I want to make millions of dollars not thousands. At this stage I think I need to devote 100% to risk. My goal: 100% every 6 months on average. For the first 2 years. And I really don't like FOREX. I just don't see how to make money there. It's all manipulated and I just don't get it.:crap: