Profiting off stock movements

Hi there, I am an industry outsider and recently over lunch someone brought up an interesting method - if you have say $50k in savings, and you decide to go and buy any blue chip reliable stock, in a maximum of 3 days you would have made 1% if you follow the market movements. That is $500.

Looking at this over the last few months, I think that this person is right? But then I was thinking it might be illegal?

Can someone explain why more people dont profit off the "stock marginal movements"? Or is there a whole lot of people actually doing this?

26 Comments
 

Yes you could make that trade. However, betting your house on a single stock making a 1% move over 3 days is foolish.

Only two sources I trust, Glenn Beck and singing woodland creatures.
 

Bad news hits and within one day the stock loses 10% of its value.

Only two sources I trust, Glenn Beck and singing woodland creatures.
 

You buy $50000 worth stock at say 1130am - say stock X - for $75 a pop. Gives you 666 shares. You wait for the stock to climb say a dime - reasonable expectation over 3 days (?). And sell it all. You just made $65. $65 may not mean a lot by itself but you could repeat this process a lot of times over weeks and make a few extra thousand a year? Is this illegal?

 

Rather than play the equity markets, people like to play the debt markets.

They like to agree to terms where they get $10 today if they have to pay back $11 in a few months. Some people just like having the money today I guess and don't really care about the concept you are describing.

Does this make sense?

 

Alright, so the person who told me about this just showed me his returns, and he has made a 35% return this year (so far!) on his money doing this. Is this absolutely unbelievable? Like I said, I am an industry outsider but is making money on stock oscillations absolutely impossible (and this person is just making a joke)?

 

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