MarketWatch Investing Game anyone?

I'm confused about the Triple Leveraged ETFs. They all look like losers? Do you short those?

The website's ETF values aren't accurate, it is just a good list of available ones.

Understand what an ETF does. It is a single stock that behaves more or less like the market. So take TQQQ as an example (ProShares Triple Nasdaq fund). If the NASDAQ goes up 1% it goes up 3%.

Now you have to check the funds and see how closely they mirror the markets as some funds don't really (scam from Wall Street. Imagine that!)

Now there are also short funds. Normally when you short a stock you sell the shares before you own them. There are triple ETF short stocks too. Those shares go up when the market goes down. So SQQQ will go down 3% for every 1% the Nasdaq goes up. The advantage is for small investors that don't have enough to qualify for a margin account, they can short the market by buying a short ETF. Handy tool for when things decide to go down.

So to recap, levereged ETFs are great for short term investing (based on price adjustment although this isn't true for all.)

A typical, properly managed ETF will mirror the market by points. For a triple, 1% up on the market equals 3% up on the ETF. A short ETF does the opposite. 1% up on the market equals a 3% down on a triple short ETF.

Now you know.

How the berkeley does that work?

If I could find a stock that gained 3% for every 1% the dow went up, I would put all of my money in it immediately. And retire in a couple years.

There must be a huge catch.

That is a leveraged ETF. Study them it is very interesting

It's been kind of quiet in this thread. Is this thing on? (tap tap)

No, but you are, do you do this for a living?

No, I sell industrial metalworking fluids. Making money in stocks is a lot like selling products.

A) Holding stocks just makes your net worth fluctuate. Realising your gains builds wealth.

2) Take what you can get. Don't obsess over what you missed out on or you'll miss what's coming up.

iii) There's money in volume. If Google goes up $10 and you have 10 shares, you make $100. But if you have 10,000 shares of a $1 stock and it goes up $0.03, you make $300.

Plus, the game is SirTradealot so I figured I would, you know, trade a lot.

I really wish I knew what your doing. The problem with stocks is very rarely does someone publicly give up their secrets, and if they are doing some in private they usually want paid for it.

VIGRX is my only stable stock, and it makes barely anything.

In the last game I did ok with IPOs but they require constant attention.

I do triple ETFs and avoid days that I know I won't be watching. The past few days have been the first time I have played in weeks

PHeller wrote: I really wish I knew what your doing. The problem with stocks is very rarely does someone publicly give up their secrets, and if they are doing some in private they usually want paid for it. VIGRX is my only stable stock, and it makes barely anything. In the last game I did ok with IPOs but they require constant attention.

I'm doing exactly what I outlined in the post above yours.

If you're holding a stock you aren't really making anything. If it goes up $500 one day and back down the next day, you're back where you started. You have to sell (or cover a short) to realize your gains. When you are making profit on a stock, sell it (or cover it) to keep that money. I'm playing with volatile stocks that are designed for intraday trading. I buy and sell (and short and cover) when they move a few cents and keep all those little profits.

Also, volume is key to big gains. Blue chip and big name stocks are good at holding value for the long term (years) but they are expensive. Right now, I have 140,000 shares of an oil stock that trades around $1.25. If it moves $0.01 in the right direction, I make $1,400. Its up $0.17 right now for the day. I got out when I was up $.09 because I thought it would reverse direction but I was wrong.

Anyway, that's what I am doing. Let me know if I can help out in any other way.

tone="bragging"

BAM! Broke the $100,000 barrier 20 minutes after market open!

/bragging

OK, I just had to get that out of my system.

In reply to nervousdog:

Where do you find such stocks? I've tried searching for stocks using Google Finance, but I'm not sure what metrics I'm looking for the indicate a potentially good day-trade purchase.

I mostly use Yahoo Finance and the Marketwatch homepage.

Go to stock data on Yahoo Finance and they have a market movers section which shows the most active stocks. You can also sort by gainers and losers. You'll start to notice that some stocks show up on this list every day. Check those stocks out. I like to look at the chart and see if the stock bounces around a lot (say 3 months of up and down within a relatively small range) or if it just started fluctuating. Low price stocks that move up or down every day are good places to make a little profit. Jump in and get out when you make some money. Don't hold these stocks, they are terrible investments.

Marketwatch will often have articles about changes or volatility in different industries where they mention different indexes and indicators. I research the stocks mentioned and look for the same kind of opportunities.

So low price, buy in bulk, get in get out. I usually make big moves with one stock at a time. Each trade is $10 in the game so once you are over $20 positive on a stock you are making profit. Don't fret about timing the market, its nearly impossible. Decide how much you would be happy with from each trade and stick to it. Some of my worst moves were having something go beyond my expectations and then thinking "Maybe I can make a little more if I wait". I nearly always broke even or lost in those situations. If you decide you want $500 from a move and you are up $550, take it! Later if it looks like you could have made $1000, just remind yourself you could have just as easily lost $1000.

Disclaimer: This is pretend money. I would never recommend gambling like this with real money unless you can watch the market all day and that's still extremely risky.

You need to read book after book and practice paper trading. Find someone who knows stocks and follow what they do. Twitter makes that easy. I've been trying to swing trade the last 2 years and pretty much just broke even but still trying to learn. My capital is tied up in my first house Now so trading pretty much dried up.

In reply to nervousdog:

Is this still your strategy, because damn!

Flight Service wrote: In reply to nervousdog: Is this still your strategy, because damn!

logs into game

Holy E36 M3.

How are you still logging into the game? I can't find it anymore and now you have me curious!!

-Rob

Yes, it's pretty much still my strategy. Another fun thing to do is follow those Penny Stock emails. Once they start pumping a stock, just put it on your radar. Wait a week or two for it to build up then short the E36 M3 out of it. Once the ripoff artists stop pushing the stock, everyone tries to sell at once and you can rake in huge gains in a few days. I just did that recently and made $1.40 per share on 107,000 shares.

If you guys haven't logged in recently then you probably didn't see my high score. I never posted about it because I didn't want to be "that guy" and it seemed like this thread was dead. I was up to $1,201,389.68 about 2 months ago. In the morning I was feeling confident and put the bulk of that money into a stock that I was sure would jump up. Went to a meeting and when I got back I checked on my account. The company had made a surprise announcement about restructuring to try and keep from filing bankruptcy. I lost $900,000 before I could unload it. Lost another $200,000 making bad decisions while trying to win back what I lost. Learned some valuable lessons: Don't get emotional over losses and always use a stop-loss.

edit: spelling

from 10000 to 1.2M

holy E36 M3