Monday, May 17, 2010

Day Trading the odds are against you

Since I have got my Interactive brokers account set up. and some free time on my hands, I was going in buy 100 shares of SU (suncor) as a permanent addition to my portfolio, This broker only charges 1$ per trade when your trading 100 share lots. so I thought I would try to day trade those 100 shares a few times just for fun. I was going to buy the shares anyway.

So over the course of the day I did 52 trades of 100 shares of SU. They added up quickly. I netted about 130$ from the trades, but after paying 52$ to the broker I ended up with approximately $80.

Okay I admit it was fun. It is clear to me that this is gambling, and since there is a 1$ fee for every trade, it is equivalent gambling at a casino where the house has an edge.  The higher the commission the broker charges you the higher the house edge.

I used the strategy that there will be resistance at the $32.00 per share price since it is a round number. and the high bid size I saw in the level 2 quotes confirmed my theory. I was buying shares at 32.01 making my break even price 32.03, so I was selling the shares for 32.04 or better.

The only clear winner here was the broker. I can't even imagine how people can day trade with an account like investors edge.  Even with 1 click trades and live streaming quotes and 1$ commissions your still at a disadvantage to an institutional trader.

Will I do this again? yes probably until I end up losing 100$ trying to make $1. then I can go back and read this post and say I should have listened to myself.

No comments:

Post a Comment