Let me tell you story about a working individual- and you guess about him as to who he is. He usually watches TV business Channel as CNBC, Profit at night, reads yellow news paper in the morning and subscribes to stock alerts.

As usual, some days are bad some average, some good and rarely but some very good. A broker advises him to buy a share and he does. He makes good money on the share and thus becomes a devoted fan of the broker. On a day, his advise does not work, he blames some US recession, Dollar ratio, advance decline and some other technical jargon- half of which even he does not know- but is told about them every day.

He uses online trading terminal to trade shares and feels great about each tip he gets. He is a brilliant guy with above normal intelligence yet not able to concentrate on anything between 9:30AM to 3:30 PM i.e. minutes before start of trading till it ends. Throughout the period, he is tense, relaxed, ecstatic, and not able to meet his job targets yet justified in his own self that he is busy in making money- so no problem.

The tips he usually gets are “Watch this stock” (means if it goes up, you were already told that it would; if it does not, you were only told to study the share); Stop Loss (what happens if share falls to that value and suddenly recovers- means you have no patience); accumulate on every dip(then why buy now, will buy only at dips). Anyways, some strategies work, some not. One day, he makes good money, he thinks, he was foolish to keep his balances in FDs and other useless things, and other day he thinks, his pursuits despite all the tension don’t give returns worth an FDR.

Through out the day, call from Boss or client or anybody is a headache and only calls that are welcome from network of friends discussing the shares.

Whom are we talking about; Is it you? If yes, be sure of the fact that another surfer reading this about hundreds of miles away in another city would bet that this is his story.

Trading is a zero sum game. One person wins while the other loses. But the addiction is immense. Instead of spending time speculating, focus on the job at hand.

Anyways, if you still have to trade and are a working person with no access to real research; be a long term investor and keep investments spread in different sectors. Don’t forget the investors betting only on Infosys burnt their fingers badly.

Remember, if you have made money in day trade today- somebody somewhere lost it. You wont be successful always.