Happier Abroad Forum Community

Without question the ideal business for one to go and be happier abroad is trading, preferably stocks. Futures requires more capital to truly be effective and stocks allow so many choices (companies) and best of all allows you to trade incrementally. You can start with 50 shares, then go to 100 when you are profitable for a while. Slowly move up in increments of 50-100 shares over months or years. Actually if you pick the right stocks or the market conditions are right, you can make good money with 100-200 shares only. You must also be willing to go short( bet on declining prices) not just long. So many good resources are available. Mr Peabody was right, start with a practice account and start small.

At one point I was consistently making $1000 a day.

The key is to never take a big loss and try to make small consistent gains.

Stock options are the best.

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Maker55 wrote:Stock options are the best.

Yes, options are great. One can combine the two. A person who day trades will learn to know great option opportunities for daytrading, swingtrading (2-5 days) and longer term.

eurobrat wrote:Yea sure, if you have the CAPITOL to do it in the first place most of us only have 5-10k cash to our names.

A person with 5-10 k could try to trade for a prop fim where they will give you access to more capital and the ability to avoid the 25k daytrading requirement.

Also, options or futures or forex could be done until capital is above 25k.

Even better would be to swing trade or long term trading. Hold stocks from a few days to a few months and continually build up capital gains until one is above 25k.

I started back in 2003 with only about 3k and I think I only added 2-4k more capital and was over 25k in under 4 months. So I made about 18-20k.

What is your trading strategy, Trader1972? 90% of retail investors lose money in stocks and under-perform the indexes, so what's your secret?

Maker55 wrote:Stock options are the best.

They're more capital intensive, hard to understand and use to your advantage and let's not forget that a few bad position can wipe out your portfolio in days. I actually agree with the OP: stocks and FX spots are the easiest to understand and trade, albeit they require a lot of eyes-on-screen persistence and profits can be wafer thin, such that a medium-sized loss can take away days of hard work.

An experienced trader could make $200 dollars a day on a $5000 retail future's account. There are 20 trading days per month, so that amounts to $4000 a month which would be more than enough to live in many third world countries. But, its a skill which takes years to learn so you need to invest time in the education.

ethan_sg wrote:What is your trading strategy, Trader1972? 90% of retail investors lose money in stocks and under-perform the indexes, so what's your secret?

There really is no secret except


NEVER ALLOW A LARGE LOSING TRADE


After that, these are what come to mind.
1. Study
2. Trade small
3. Add to winners- you should have some BIG winning days when stocks have momentum
4. Use multiple buys and sells when trading more than your minimum shares,
ex. If buying 300 shares buy 100 3 times then sell 3 sets of 100. Try to hold out as much
as possible on the last 100.
5. When in doubt- SELL or close your position.
6. Don't fight trend. If you do, its only for small profits and use no more than 25% of normal
position size.
7. Either pick a few stocks and master them or trade the biggest movers each day, those with higher volume than average.

day trading is all new to me. I'm trying to get into it now. What would be a good book to read to start? I figure I have maybe 2k to play with . I want to try out a stimulator first for a month before I actually use real money.

Trading stocks is for chumps. Anyone who thinks they can live abroad and make a living trading is a chump. I hope nobody here will use their retirement or redundancy money or inheritance to trade.

I traded extensively in 2009. I had a great system and I made some good money. But it was too stressful and too much like hard work.

Having your own business or teaching English are much better options for the majority of folk here.

Actually I still trade bonds, but I have my own secret system that took a lot of time and effort to prove.

xiongmao wrote:Trading stocks is for chumps. Anyone who thinks they can live abroad and make a living trading is a chump. I hope nobody here will use their retirement or redundancy money or inheritance to trade.

I traded extensively in 2009. I had a great system and I made some good money. But it was too stressful and too much like hard work.

Having your own business or teaching English are much better options for the majority of folk here.

Actually I still trade bonds, but I have my own secret system that took a lot of time and effort to prove.

Do you know how ignorant you are to say trading stocks is for chumps?

I said it was the ideal business because it truly is. Of course most people do not have the capital or dedication to succeed. But to say its for chumps? I think teaching English is for fags.

Very few people make it as traders because they wing it instead of actively going out and learning the skills. You have to treat it like a profession and a business. It took me several years but I have developed a precise set of rules that tell me where to enter and where to exit. I don't wing anything. I find high probability patterns and do the same thing over and over, because the same patterns show up in the market time after time. All the markets are one big correlated algorithm which repeats itself predictably. Most are losing but conversely someone has to be winning because trading is a zero sum game. I day trade futures for small profits which quickly add up. My risk is limited. I hold nothing overnight and stay in the market an average of 2 minutes. For day trading, futures is the way to go. I make more money than the most experienced English teacher could make in any third world country. I have posted enough information for a self-starting hard worker to get started. Most will never get it and believe trading can't be profitable because they are listening to the losers. So it goes. No problemo. Trading isn't for everyone.


viewtopic.php?t=11504

Ok...let's make a separate thread about ESL vs trading .

This thread is about trading. I joined investopedia and using the simulator as a tool to learn. Allot of this stuff is new to me. I figure I have $2K as expandable investment. But first I figure just play with the simulator and read some of the tutorials . But still I know that trading is TOUGH.just like to know the guys who are able to make some money off it. What sites did you use? What's a starter book to read?

If your going to trade a stock . Do you only use the charts to read or more like fundamental analysis ? And if you do use the fundamental analysis for longer term investment . What numbers do you guys look at?

Sorry if I sound like a newbie. This is all new to me.

Currently I'm playing with 10K simulator money. I only pruchase 4 different stocks. Just learning right now. I haven't even traded yet...

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