Since I was still considering being connected to the finances, I thought of creating a website that will be of service to traders. After some time some ideas arose and I started to write the site. I called it Trading-HQ. It still exists today. The idea behind the site was to create a resource:

• With reviews of brokers, trading books, information websites, stock pick websites and related software.
• Easy to navigate
• Easy to filter for needed information
• Ability for users to contribute reviews to presented information

On the technical side, I decided to go with ASP.NET, which I already knew somewhat due to my aforementioned work with the trader. For this I also needed a Windows based web server, which is a bit more expensive than similar Linux based, so I went with a relatively cheap one, to reduce my costs. After some time, the site went up.

What are the three main problems of web business? Traffic, traffic and traffic. Well, it’s not that simple, actually, as the content and monetizing are also very important. My knowledge at all the areas was pretty low at that time but I didn’t think so and I was anxious to progress. So what were my actions in of the three areas?

Traffic generation – I knew that I needed to submit my site to many other sites in order to get incoming links and thus raise the PageRank of my site, making it higher in search engines. So, I submitted to search engines and to some other trading related websites I could find. Not much more than that.

Content – I added all the content myself. I first wrote about what I knew first-hand from my previous day-trading experience, then I looked for sites on internet and wrote about them. Of the hardest to review were the books and stock pick sites. Books, since one needed to read them for a good review. Stock pick sites were not numerous and one needed to use their services for some time in order to build an opinion. I was hoping for people to contribute this content.

Monetization – I was building on advertising, like most people do. The easiest and almost the only way at that time was using Google Adsense ad publishing. Of course, there’s a lot to know about Adsense optimization as well, but this being my first project, I didn’t delve deep in understanding how Adsense should be utilized for the best returns. So I decided to put one tall ad space to the right of my main content. I understood though, that traffic was the key.

What were the difficulties when running the site?

Traffic generation was difficult and time consuming. Without advertising one could only get to cheap sites and the regular search engines. I didn’t know of blogs at that time and they were not yet that popular. Content was very time consuming and it was hard to create quality content without actual use of products, etc. So I mostly had to paraphrase existing descriptions for the various websites and program, taken from their original sites. I needed to search the internet for various resources, filter them and write content for selected items. Monetization was very low. Although Cost Per Click (CPC) was good for the financial sector, my low traffic and unoptimized ads were bringing extremely low income. Most of the traffic I had was coming from Google’s search but over time my Pagerank has dropped (most probably since I was very slow at updating content) and the site started to stagnate.

During the period when sites was still growing, me cheap Windows-based host died on me without any warning due to some theft they’ve experienced. The site went offline but luckily they agreed to send me my database, which held the content of the entered data so far. I then decided to move to Linux host, so I had to rewrite the whole site’s backend on PHP. Not a nice experience overall. Since then I’ve moved to more serious and established hosting providers.

Although I still believe the site could have been profitable and successful (if done right) it was a big failure.

Lessons learned

• Building the website itself is only the first step, often the easiest one. This is especially true today, when there are good ready platforms for almost any type of site you might want.
• Writing original content is hard and time-consuming work. Far harder than I first imagined.
• Building traffic on a content site is a hard process. One needs to know the web sphere related to the project. No content translates to no visitors for content-based site. It’s impossible to write all of the content for a site like this one by yourself, since you’re limited by your own knowledge, experience, time and finances.
• Traffic from search engines dwindles if the site is not updated regularly.
• It was difficult to lift and operate it all alone by myself.
• Web hosting stability is important. Not to look for cheap in web hosting as it often turns out badly.
• I still lacked in programming, SEO, website design and general site usability skills.

Conclusions

• It’s almost impossible to wear all the hats on web site like this one should have been.
• The business model and prognosis should be done ahead of starting a website like this. This could have me lots of time.

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The system was pretty simple, mathematically, but required a prior analysis of stock graphs to be done each time before trading. I opened an account for day-trading on the US stock exchanges and was mainly trading on the NASDAQ and some NYSE stocks. Initially, I strictly aligned my trading with the learned strategy and made some good money in the first couple days. Then, of course, the statistics started to get more even and I was going back to where I started.

The real problems started to appear when I began to perform different variation on the original strategy, thinking I was smart enough to make the changes. At this time I was also continuously reading more material on day trading of stocks, trying to learn technical analysis better. Now, my erratic and non aligned trading activity started to produce less than desirable results and I was quickly seeing my money flowing out of my account. At later stages I even started investing part of the money into longer term positions, where I thought it was appropriate, based on my technical analysis skills.

At the end, after about 9 months of such stock trading I closed my day trading account, taking out only half of my originally invested money back home. Half of it was lost due to one stock in long-term position which I did not exit in time, cutting my losses, but held to it until it became lower than I could bear (of course, some months later in returned to my entry position and rose much higher). Patience is an important skill of a stock trader but it is of the hardest to develop.

Overall, I could say that all the money was lost due to my neglect of the original system and the fact that I didn’t stick to it. I later read that sticking to a system, when it is your money at stake, is the hardest part of any stock trading, but it is especially true of day trading.

From a philosophic point of view I find day trading immoral. A day trader does not produce anything, he doesn’t even invest in the stocks as he has no stocks at the end of the day. In the end I felt that day traders are like parasites of the stock market, living off long-term investors, trying to outsmart both them and one another. If, on average, day traders earn more money than they loose, that means that they’ve taken money out of longer terms traders, who at least could be called investors and as such, bringing value to the financial ecosystem.

Lessons learned

• Sticking to strategy when trading stocks is of utmost priority. Failing to stick to a selected strategy almost guarantees failure and losses.
• Commission on day trading is high and eats much of your balance. Even if you get $10 per trade (one way). That’s $20 for a round (buy/sell). Sometimes you can do 5 such rounds a day. That’s $100 on commissions, and you could lose on that day in equity as well. Overall, I believe that around 10% of my losses were the commissions.
• Day trading with leverage (4 to 1 usually), can make your balance fluctuate very fast. You can earn fast and you can lose fast. One should play with an amount that he can afford to see lost in one day. I stopped my day trading for good when I lost $1500 in one day and my belly was all tight and I was very stressed. It was too much for me to have lost on stupid mistakes in one day.
• You have to have nerves of steel. Day trading is very fast and sometimes seconds play a role. Seeing your money falling in value in real time is very challenging psychologically. This in itself can lead one to break the strategy.
• Day trading is a job. Starting from the preliminary analysis and ending when the trading day ends it’s 6-7 hours a day job. And then you can loose lots of money in that time, as well. Over time this became very frustrating to me.

My conclusions

• Day trading is better done automated. It’s better to let the software perform the strategy. It doesn’t have any psychological issues. Plus, it can free one’s time of staring at the screen. If a preliminary analysis is required, one can still do it. There’s no tension in doing the analysis since the money doesn’t “play” at this time.
• One can earn money with day trading, but it’s real work, a profession, and it’s not the easiest one. It is definitely not a stable job.
• Day trading is immoral and I don’t want to be a part of it.

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