Trader poll, anyone?

[gambler2075]

I have decided to post a poll here, hoping that the anonymity of people's responses would allow more people to see the reality of trading.

The big problem with trading, like casinos, is that people are very quick to say when they made money, but don't mention when they lose. Friends are quick to tell you when they made a quick 1000$ on a hot stock pick, but don't mention when they blow up their trading account when some biotech stock pick goes badly. Asking people to post their losses on SA would be very likely to get few or no responses. Hopefully a poll (which I hope is anonymous) will allow people to be truthful about their trading experiences, and could prove useful for people who are trying to decide if they want to become active traders or not.

‪All American Rejects - Dirty Little Secret‬‏ - YouTube

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[gambler2075]

I guess I also want to clarify here, and that is that this question is really about the lifetime profits or losses from TRADING, not from overall stock market investing.

That is, it is one thing to have 100K$ in a Vanguard fund that you have kept for 10 years and then turned into 150,000$, but if you also tried daytrading/market timing 100K$ and you lost that completely, then you should pick the option that you lost 100K$ (the contribution from trading), rather than losing 50K$, which was the overall balance of your stock account.

I also suppose that this also includes dot-com mania losses too... because you were buying individual stocks at the time and most of those imploded as well.

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[KTP]

So you are lumping day trading in with swing trading and long term stock trading?

I am unsure how to answer until after august 2. I have some option spreads that should do well if the market goes up or down, but if we go into a severe depression for 2 years, they will lose at least half value. I'll answer august 3.

Note I am not totally stupid and have 90% of our assets in stock index funds and bond funds (and some cash).

[gambler2075]

So you are lumping day trading in with swing trading and long term stock trading?

I am unsure how to answer until after august 2. I have some option spreads that should do well if the market goes up or down, but if we go into a severe depression for 2 years, they will lose at least half value. I'll answer august 3.

Note I am not totally stupid and have 90% of our assets in stock index funds and bond funds (and some cash).

Well, I was a bit conflicted how to make the poll, but there are only 10 options so I chose to make it the way I did. I guess there are essentially two camps in the investing world... those that trade and those that do not. I would say that buying a ton in Mar 2009 and holding for a couple of years isn't really 'trading' although it is definitely slightly more active than just DCA-ing, regardless of the price.

This poll is also on a non-trader messageboard, so for the vast majority of readers, there is basically only 'trading' and 'buy-and-hold'. If this was a trader messageboard, then I would be much more specific, but since this poll was to try to get people to see what the true distribution of profitable vs unprofitable was, I lumped all 'active' portfolio management together. I urge people to vote here as the larger the sample size, the more useful this poll is.

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