Posted on 07/04/2006 6:53:27 PM PDT by Graybeard58
NEW YORK · Bill Hanousek spends at least four hours a day logged into his TD Ameritrade account, carefully monitoring his investments and outstanding options, and extensively researching his next move.
At the end of the day, he logs off, leaving it all behind to attend to his real job, as minister of the Queensboro Hill Community Church in Flushing, N.Y.
"This isn't my focus," Hanousek said. "It allows me to do my ministry, which I really enjoy and is my real calling, but I wouldn't be able to support my family on it."
Hanousek, 56, has spent 10 years as an online trader and 43 years total as an investor. Most would consider him a "day trader," akin to those brave -- perhaps foolhardy -- people who gave up careers to trade stocks during the 1990s stock market bubble.
"I think the term `day trader' was overused. It created expectations in people's minds, like an easy way to win the lottery," Hanousek said. "The ones of us who made it through are a lot smarter and wiser now."
The active trader never went away, though the herd was thinned considerably in the bear market of 2000-2003. Having learned hard lessons from the "irrational exuberance" of the 1990s, these new active traders are doing their homework, hedging their bets and taking on far more advanced trading strategies.
"You certainly don't have the return of the taxi driver quitting his job to become a day trader," said Jarrett Lilien, chief operating officer at E-Trade Financial Corp. "And they're not going after some obscure tiny stock they read about in an e-mail. People are using advanced order types, advanced strategies. They're making money."
Certainly, it was easier to make money in the 1990s -- buy a stock, hold it for an hour,
(Excerpt) Read more at sun-sentinel.com ...
Wasn't their some study that someone won the the nobel prize for that showed that index fund investments mathematically had to yield the best results?
In the short term and in choppy markets like we've had over last few mths, selective stocks and funds will beat indexes. But if one's timing horizon is long term - say 20-40 years - nothing can beat an asset allocated portfolio of index funds.
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