[fintstone]

I used to make a lot of money day trading in my spare time. I would identify trends in small caps where they continually oscillated...almost like a sine wave (say between $4 and $10). I usually placed an order at night when for the bottom end of the oscillation...say $4.25 and it would usually fulfill in the morning. At lunch, I would check the price and place a sell order for around $6 or 8$ depending on the price. I usually bought about 1000 shares and made a $1000 every couple of days. The problem was...at least for me, it was hard to stick to small trades (as I was spending "found' money that I made in the market). Soon, I had made tens of thousands and was trading in much larger lots. The problem then was that sometimes my work didn't permit me to lunch or get off I time to trade...and sometimes life kept me so busy that I let some of them "ride" for top long and missed the sell and eventually they break out of that range. Some days I would look at the screen and have made $100K that day, but then I rode a couple all the way down to zero because I was travelling for work, etc. (before smart phones)...so I stopped after a particularly annoying $70K loss day (my job only paid about $80K)...even though I only lost money that I had made in the market, it seemed as painful as if I had really labored for it.

Not too long after, I was out of work for a period of time. I figured that it was cool as I could make big bucks if I concentrated on the market. The problem is, without other income...I was too conservative and just didn't have the ability to pull the trigger as the risk terrified me. Needless to say, I went back to work and have used an index fund ever since.