Yes it's true. Years ago I used to generate the bulk of my income from trading stocks on a daily and sometimes an hourly basis. My computer monitor was always displaying trades as they happened, and all of the pending bid and ask prices of my favorite trading stocks were prominently indicated.
I didn't care if a company was financially sound or not, as my investments were never long term, usually no longer than 24 hours. All I cared about was volatility, or how much a stock moved during the day.
I watched the "tick" and would "ladder" stocks both up and down, playing long and then selling short following the sine wave of price to the best of my abilities. And I was pretty good at it.
And catastrophic losses were prevented by placing "stop losses" on my equities. My rule was seven and a half percent. If a stock moved in the wrong direction by that margin it was automatically liquidated.
Thousands of dollars were made or lost in hours. And those around me knew not to interrupt me in the last ten minutes before the markets closed. That was the time when I put my investments "to bed" for the night in anticipation of "after market" trading.
Does it sound complicated? Well, after a while it got to me and I had to stop. I was constantly on the edge and eventually decided to give up the trading and concentrate more on my real estate career.
Man, was that a mistake! Day trading was a walk in the park compared to this real estate market!
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