...what are you trying to accomplish by daytrading?
(1) You enjoy gambling with some mad money you can afford to lose--it's fun and exciting! And if I lose it all--so what.
(2) You're trying to make up losses your portfolio suffered during the past few months
(3) You're trying to accumulate money for the future so you can retire wealthy
(4) You don't know, but it seems like a great idea when you look at how much you "could" have made if only you'd bought it a couple days ago and sold it today.
# 4 ---Can't a gal have a little funn dreaming?
P.S. I am not a day trader.
Got this via email from the The Fools and it is funny.
March 10, 2009
Markets exploded today because of a memo from
Citigroup (NYSE:
C) CEO Vikram Pandit, telling employees that -- surprise! -- the bank was actually on track to post its best quarter in over a year ... and a profit! Maybe things aren't as bad as we thought! We're saved! We're saved! Whoo-hoo!
Not so fast
You can't blame the market's reaction. Since Feb. 6, the Dow Jones has risen all of five times. Even relatively healthy banks like
JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:
JPM) and
Wells Fargo (NYSE:
WFC) are being treated like basket cases. Anything that can be slightly spun as good news is bound to be clinged to. Just give us any good news -- even if it's not, you know, true -- and the market will run with it. This is no exception. Citigroup's announcement that "Hey, hey, we're actually profitable!" is twisted, tortured, and largely irrelevant to its ultimate fate.
The gist of Pandit's memo was that
operating profit was going gangbusters -- as if operating profit has been the problem all along. The problem is not a bank's ability to generate current income, but its ability to absorb losses on legacy assets that are worth a fraction of their purchase price -- using absurd amounts of leverage to boot.
The memo disclosed numbers that point to an operating profit of about $8.3 billion this quarter, but Pandit didn't give any mention of what asset writedowns would be. "In January and February alone, our revenues excluding externally disclosed marks were $19 billion," he said. Great! Now... uh... about those "externally disclosed marks?" How are those workin' out for you?
I'm not worried that Citigroup can't generate operating profit: I'm worried it's not solvent. There's a big difference. Imagine a person drowning in debt but insisting they're wealthy because their paycheck exceeded their grocery bills. You get the idea.
