Day Trading Results

Most active traders probably eyed Onyx Pharmaceuticals some time this week. It jumped about 120% over the past 5 business days and I've seen people screaming like mad for a correction but that correction didn't come today...if it even needs one. (I wouldn't know, haven't checked the news and fundamentals.) Anyway, I bought about $10,000 worth and rode it for a 5% gain today. That was awesome. I also had a few Google shares from yesterday, they jumped and I took about a $100 of profit.

I didn't do too much trading besides what went on yesterday and today. I had some other things to take care of earlier in the week and I didn't feel like waking up at the opening bell, and I just got Lost Planet, it's a great game for X-Box live. I'm supposed to have Gears of War comming in, which reminds me, I need to write something up about the console Wars and how I have or have not profited from them.

All in all, it was a good week. I walked away with about $600 even though I only traded 2 days this week.

Bernanke's Comments

I've been looking forward to Bernanke's comments for a while now. I'll wait till after tommorow to post my thoughts.

Reflections of Day Trading

Today I made a little over $250 day trading. This made me realize how my perception of money has been changed over the course of my life. When I was in junior high and high school I measured how expensive things were by how many weeks worth of lunch money it took to buy a video game, when I was working the 8-5 and sometimes six I judged prices by how many hours of work it took to pay them.

Now that I'm day trading I judge how expensive things are by how much money they're going to cost me in the long run. Take for example a typical weekend outing: Arcade, $20, a couple beers, take on another $10, food, that's another $10, gas, that's about $5. So, we have a typical night out costing around $45, for the sake of this post we'll round to $50.

Assuming I keep up my 25% a month return (unlikely) that means my 50 dollar outing will have cost me about $450 bucks by next tax season. When I see figures like these in print or think about them it makes me want to penny pinch and scrouge my way out of things like wedding shower gifts and rent money. But then I remember life isn't worth living if you don't spend a dime of your money on things you want.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is "in the long run, we are all dead."

Yes, I'm a fan of Keynesian economics...to a certain extent.