 What this zip code nonsense?
On Tue, 25 Mar 2008 07:33:07 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@> wrote:
>On Mar 25, 10:03 am, Cyrus Afzali <pnsm...@lnubb.pbz> wrote:
>> On Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:52:30 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
>
>> >No wonder the entire US banking system is in crisis if they let people
>> >like you speculate.
>>
>> Who's speculating?
>
>Marcie claims to have become a multimillionaire by day-trading.
So, maybe he has. Look, I'm no huge fan of Marc, but if he did, it's
not like he was taking my money and gambling with it. It's also worth
noting that the profits he made including paying taxes at a MUCH
higher rate than the average American, because short-term capital
gains are taxed at the top marginal rate in your bracket. For example,
in my case, when I bought/sold ETFC last year on a hunch and pocketed
20 percent in 3 days, 35 percent of that money went to Uncle Sam since
it wasn't considered "ordinary" income.
So I speculated and made some decent money, but I NEVER depend on
doing that. I have a *small* pool of money that I devote to
speculation and/or momentum trading that's completely separate from my
IRA. I manage both my IRA and momentum investments, as well as my
wife's 401(k), but I don't trade in anything but my speculation
account more than once a quarter.
When I speculate, it's with nobody's money but my own because I don't
use margin and I don't short. I do trade options, but the worst that
can happen there is they expire "out of the money," so I'm never in a
position to lose more than I put in (with shorting, your losses are at
least theoretically unlimited until you cover).
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