by Gavin M.
Before you start reading, I do not want to come off as hypocritical so I will have full disclosure. I am the co-founder of Equity Sense - a market advisory and training company. So we do on occasion take in students for training. On average we get 5 a year. Why so little? Because if you have been following me on Twitter and the crazy things I do, I spend 90% of my time trading and tweeting. Whatever little time I have left I spend with my family (much to my wife's anger). So let's move on from that. There are a lot of trading schools out there - from SMB to Amplify trading to other lesser known entities. You can also check out Hogwarts and pray to the magic gods that you will luck out and make money. You never know. But, with the BTFD mania so prevalent in this market, the common trader has failed to see the value in actually learning from an experienced trader. I am referring to someone who actually is a seasoned trader who can guide a newbie. Most new traders run away from mentors because of the high upfront costs. At the last check, SMB Capital charges as much as $7,000. So they would rather keep whatever funds they have and try to read books, blogs and other free resources online. There are only two paths to being a profitable trader: learn via trial and error OR learn formally through a mentor. Both have their own caveats. The former will cost you MORE money in the long run because you are really gambling to find a system that works for you. The latter will cost you money in the beginning but you are guided to not make common mistakes. Then, most traders would decide to follow the subscription services available out there. There are a ton of them. There are ones that have option flow. There are others that do much more. In the end, finding what works for you is like going to a mall and finding that right shirt from J Crew. I went through the education route and I found that from the people we have taught, they fare better in the markets than those who have had to learn by trial and error. I will leave you with what one of my managers told me before: "If you love something so much, then the cost to be good at it shouldn't matter." Happy Easter! :)
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by Gavin M.
Before I start, let me be clear. I have been trading for 13 years now. However, I am not the resident expert in biostocks. I did not build my career trading biostocks. I maybe dabble in 2 or 3 biostocks each year and I always trade them from the sell side. As far as success with them goes, you can look up all my tweets on ACAD or VVUS. Everybody loves making money quickly and with the least amount of capital possible. Biostocks offer brazen investors and traders the chance to do so. If you look at the biotech index, it is up north of 300% year over year and it is not a shock that wall street loves this sector to speculate on. However, not every biostock yields what it promises. I am sure you have seen some pump and dump schemes happening to biostocks and people can make money in a relatively short period of time in those. But the biostock world in general has severe dangers. Most companies fail. To add insult to injury, most investors' funds are stuck waiting for that time when a company's drug or treatment finally shows promise. I took a short today on DYAX. I could be wrong and it could be up huge tomorrow or next month or next year. Inherent in all of these biotech stocks is the promise of a drug that could make them so much money. But until that golden day, they continue to sit on loans and private investor money. DYAX is one of those stocks that I find quite intriguing. It has gone up so quickly on little merit. I am aware of the news but it is just funny how the stock is up huge on something so little. I think this attests to the ridiculous risk taking people in the markets are doing right now. Hanging on every word by the FDA is not a conducive investment thesis. When you purely rely on an entity that can render a binary judgment on a stock you own, that is not investing. It is not even trading. It is purely gambling. Everybody wants to a millionaire overnight. Everyone wants to get in on the action because they have a tremendous fear of missing out (FOMO). In the end I think that biotech remains a hugely speculative space where the zero sum game is much more dangerous than the other markets. It is for the same reason why my niche is in the other sectors of the markets because they make more sense and they have given me the ability to make money consistently. I did not make money in this business by gambling. I made my money by finding areas in the markets that make sense to me as a trader and that made me money consistently. But in the end, to each his own. :) Good luck! |
Multiple AuthorsTraders from Equity Sense will be writing on this blog on positions and other market-related things. Archives
May 2018
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