"It's such a deeply personal voyage," Anuff observed. He preferred to wage his own personal crusade for easy money from the privacy of his San Francisco apartment. That risk of humiliation was what kept Anuff from doing his thing in a day-trading office. "Can you grasp the agony? True humiliation is knowing you missed a chance at effortless riches not a year or a month ago, but five seconds ago." A LONELY PROFESSION "Split-second financial decisions will make me rich or ruin my life," Anuff writes in his book. "It's just too intense for most amateurs," he said. "But the more I day traded, the less money I had," he said.Īnuff doesn't day trade any more and said he wouldn't advise others to get into the game. "It's totally fun," said Joey Anuff, producer of the online humor site and author of the book "Dumb Money: Adventures of a Day Trader." Beardsly quickly sold off the mystery company, pocketing a few hundred dollars in accidental profit. That's it."Īs he spoke, he entered a typo on his trading screen and instead of buying Ciena, he mistakenly purchased shares in another company. "I know they make communications equipment. "I don't really know anything about it," he said. On a typical day, he might move as many as 30,000 shares in and out of his account. Most day traders tend not to have a clue about the stocks they trade, knowing only that certain ticker symbols can be relied on to post wide swings in value, which is how a day trader makes money.īeardsly has been trading Ciena's shares almost since day one. "I don't know what it does," Inna said, clicking on a description of the company. She has been trading shares of Applied Materials. He said being surrounded by fellow day traders provides a support group when things are rough as well as an opportunity to learn from others.Īt Beardsly's side sat his wife, Inna, who is learning the ropes. They joked among themselves, occasionally cursing when a trade went sour.īeardsly likes the clubhouse atmosphere of the ProTrader office, where each member puts up at least $50,000 to open a trading account. Other traders tapped away at keyboards at other workstations. Overhead, CNBC's market commentary blared from a TV. "I'll never work for a living again after doing this," Beardsly said during a brief lull in the action. He is the Bay Area poster boy for day trading. After a couple of months of steady losses, he estimates he now makes an average $5,000 a day. Not surprisingly, when asked to arrange access to a day trader in his shop, Hsu picked Beardsly, who has been with ProTrader for just six months.īeardsly, as Hsu would say, has it.
"It may seem like gambling to those who don't understand, but not to those who do." "But you talk to a guy who consistently pulls money out of the market, and you can see that something is clicking - they have it," he said. "It's very risky," admitted Jimmy Hsu, manager of the Silicon Valley branch of ProTrader, which operates a chain of 19 day-trading offices nationwide. The North American Securities Administrators Association determined in a recent report that 70 percent of day traders "will not only lose, but will almost certainly lose everything they invest."įor its part, the Securities and Exchange Commission has warned that "most individual investors do not have the wealth, the time or the temperament to make money and to sustain the devastating losses that day trading can bring."Īnd still they come, lured by hopes of market riches and easy living. While some gamblers may have systems or the self-discipline to beat the odds, just about everyone else who takes a seat at the green-felt tables will end up being separated from his or her cash over the long haul. "You might hear from friends who made some money at the casinos, but you seldom hear from all the rest who didn't."Ĭasinos are an apt metaphor for day trading. "But people still tend to focus on the success stories. "There's no reason to believe that anyone who day trades will do well," he said. "When individuals hear that they can make a lot of money doing this, they go for it," said Brett Trueman, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley's Haas School of Business. Yet despite such grim statistics, and despite a market that now lacks much of the momentum of past years, would-be masters of the universe continue flocking to join the ranks of day traders.Īs many as 100,000 of the approximately 8 million North Americans who buy and sell stocks online are believed to be at least part-time day traders. Studies show that the vast majority will lose their shirts. What does appeal to Beardsly is the notion of turning a fast buck by getting into and out of stocks at warp speed - an activity that the former San Jose house builder expects to earn him more than $1 million this year.īut Beardsly and the relatively few other successful day traders like him are definitely the exception.
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