Expert: Steve Hach - 8/19/2011

Question
I have been investing in different businesses and real estate ventures since I sold my company in NY and went into semi retirement. I am still interested in finding a day trading system that fits my personality and something I am comfortable with. I have joined a few oil trading groups with limited success. It has been a very frustrating experience to say the least. As you probably know, approximately 90% of the people / companies selling these trading systems are either scams or they simply do not work and are only interested in making money selling their services / memberships. It is a jungle out there and it is very difficult to get objective information. It takes a lot of research to sift thru it all too weed out the bad from the good.

Can you give me some advice or suggest a direction to take.

Randy

Answer
Hi Randy,

My suggestions would be these:

Avoid Day Trading--you will lose

Avoid get rich quick trading systems--they are scams

Avoid commodities, forex, etc--you will lose

If you want to play in currencies, commodities, etc. invest in them with safer, low cost vehicles such as ETFs.

With ETFs you can play in that macro space with far less risk.

Many of the money managers I work with use those ETFs to make long-term trades and they make real money for the high net worth clients.

Given the current state of the market and world economy, I also like the idea of real estate as an investment, especially if you can pick up low cost undervalued properties and rent them.  Not real glamorous, but when you can buy condos in florida for 65k and rent them for 1000/month--as an example, it is pretty hard to lose money.  And it's hard to find a more beat down asset class than real estate right now.

I just don't see how the average person can ever succeed day trading or in things like oil.

Too volatile, too risky, too many pitfalls.

Best,

Steve