Stock Trading
One of the Top Gambling strategies!

Stock trading, otherwise known as charting or day trading, relies on charting (graphing) the share price in different ways and looking for patterns of behaviour of buyers and sellers in the charts.

Shares are bought and sold usually on short (commonly daily or less to weekly) time frames. Hence price fluctuations on the stock of interest require constant attention.

As buying and selling decisions are usually completely unrelated to the underlying fundamentals of the company in question, traders speculate on the stock price rising and on being able to get out quickly if it doesn’t.

The activity does nothing to support the ongoing longer-term activities of productive enterprises and hence the economy in general.

Why avoid it? There is a need for constant attention to the market. Also, because of the large number of trades entered into, record keeping becomes a major (time) concern, and presumably an expense if using an accountant to prepare your tax returns.

It needs persistence to stick with the day-to day decision making required. But there are a stack of trading advisors offering winning strategies. This ensures a steady flow of new recruits into the activity as others burn out.

On reason people take up stock market trading is that it may present short-term gains and hence provides an opportunity for an alternative income to a regular job.

Also, there are plenty of people out there willing to offer stock trading advice on how to trade stock and provide their own (winning?) strategy.

Most stock market advertising relates to stock trading basics. And this strategy is commonly promoted as a fast money maker.

Because it attracts a lot of attention and has a certain excitement associated with it because of its short-term nature, I see it as one of the top gambling strategies.

This is in contrast to long term value investing which does not provide immediate income, but which requires a buy-and-hold strategy with longer-term commitment of funds and more certain results.

The big money is made by sitting, not trading!

Stockmarket charts do provide a quick overview of price movements. When considering a share purchase, I usually not only check the price chart for the last year, but also for the last three years in order to get an overview as to how the company has been travelling price-wise.

Day trading stocks can be viewed as being at one end of the gambling/investing continuum - and in my opinion, the wrong end!

From Stock Trading to Best Investment Strategies