mma
"Silly . Some of the greatest traders in the world hold overnight : Seykota , Tudor Jones , Eckhardt , Turtles to name but a few "
the foundation of my trading philosiphies came from soros and jim rogers, both of whom would claim to be long term investors and both say they are crap at short term, let alone intra-day
and i used to trade long term when that was the style that suited the markets
but when my heroes and the guys you mentioned were doing their big stuff, markets used to move a lot differently, they were at the start of, or in a long term bull market, there were major major pricing efficiencies to take advantage of, markets took a long time to price in news, and there was a lot of arrogance and unqualified people in senior positons leading to major opportunities
BUT the world has changed big time, news is priced in real quick, and everyone and his brother got hold of the long term trading concept
all those lazy useless fund people and banks gambling other peoples money tell you its long term trading - so it is safe - yeh - right - and then they have ****ed everyone's money away and all the pension money with it - but they still pick up their fat salaries
if you hold a position overnight - you are not in control of the result of the trade, and if you are not in control, you are gambling
all long term trading does is cause people to take less trades - so the apparent volatility of their trading appears to drop, but on a time basis the volatiltiy would remain the same
"CGT"
the reason you dont pay CGT on spreadbetting is simply because the tax people treat spreadbetting as gambling - when the tax authourities looked at the books of the spreadbetting companies, they realised the would get **** all if they taxed people on profits - so instead the tax is at the source of the bet and the tax is included in your spread, so you ARE paying tax in the spreadbetting spread and also indirectly in tax thgat the spreadbetting companies are paying on their profits - and you are paying a premium for each trade, and that premium is money you just give away - you will find that you are paying a greater amount than if you paid normal taxation
but there is one key to CGT anyway, it is on profits - and regardless of offsetting - the spreadbetting companies have always been happy to say that they have no long term winners
the old experts who i do admire who used to trade long term were dealing with a different market and exploiting different pricing efficiencies
the new edge in trading is in the opportunity to use direct access electronic trading and electronic data access that gives the guy on the street the same opportunity as anyone else, the same opportunity as the big banks, funds etc - an individual can now even set up their own electrocic automated trading systems running off home computers and all this is still in its infancy -so there are still inefficiencies to be exploited, the market though has just moved on to new opportunities
