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Comment by mikeegg | Hacker News Reader

Seems like playing the stock market is the easist way I've found so far. If you bet on a stock by buying 500 shares, the stock goes up ten cents (USD, $0.10), you've made $50 (I'm not counting transaction fees, just the base numbers). If you buy 5000 shares you've made $500. Make $500 three times a month and you're at $18,000 a year. Each $500 gamble may take one or two hours depending on how quickly the NASDAQ is moving.

For the specified amount of $24,000 per year, that's four $500 bets per month.

Mike

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Interesting - although I've heard tell that sometimes stock can actually go down, instead of up.

Very true, but consider that a stock can only move three directions: up, down, or sideways. This takes money. If you have the money to buy 5,000 shares of a $5.00 stock ($25,000), how long does it take that stock to move $0.10?

"how long does it take that stock to move $0.10?"

I guess that really depends which direction you're talking about.

If you're not careful, having it move down 10 cents is fairly easy to accomplish and then all you're doing is working to lose money.

I would not go the investing route if I was the OP.

I would just want to warn everyone (if it wasn't obvious enough already), that this is a pretty crazy way to attempt to make a living. While investing is not zero-sum and therefore different than gambling, the strategy described is fairly close to it. For starters, for most individual investors it would be a fairly safe assumption that intraday price fluctuations are random. I could write more, but I just couldn't leave that comment alone.

Interesting that you don't need a lot of winning bets to make a living. What about losing bets, though? Isn't this a pretty high-risk way to make a living? Also, doesn't it require a fair amount of capital to get started?

Using this idea you only bet when your batteries are charged, you have two hours guarenteed before your next crisis, you know the market is moving (almost every day something is moving), you feel good, you got enough sleep, you've already been to the bathroom, your favorite Starbucks/McDonald's/$WIFI-HOTSPOT is open, etc. Make sure you're ready to bet, watch the market, bet, go eat lunch.

I've been playing with this very idea. I've had to mentally hold one position over night. I don't like holding a position. I want to be in and out in two hours.

Gambling on the stock market is risky. I think lots of people, maybe most of the people that gamble this way, want to be rich. Well, I don't. As the OP asked the question, I only want to make enough to comfortably get by so I can spend the rest of my time living and learning.

I've heard people say almost exactly the same things about horse races and craps, but in reality both of those are -EV. As far as my understanding of economics goes, day trading is 0EV at best, -EV when transaction costs are considered. I'd rather gamble when it's +EV--and then, gamble a small amount a large number of times to ride out the variance.

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