Can the Little Guy Beat Wall Street?

Over the years I’ve heard it said that the little guy is no match for Wall Street. The small individual investor doesn’t stand a chance. Wall Street will make plenty of money off the individual investor in terms of interest and commissions, but in the end the small investor ends up losing. With the wealth of information on the web and the proliferation of online brokerages, you would think that the odds would tilt in favor of the small investor? Not so it appears. All over the web are competing interests. People want to sell you better info, superior trading systems and convince you that you can make 10 times your money in a year. Is there any truth to this? Is this really possible? Do you really need to pay for information and complex trading systems?

Well I’m proposing to find this out. I was given about $11,000.00 US that is in a locked in account that I cannot touch. Since I don’t have access to the money it doesn’t seem to be mine. What I thought I would do is trade on it and see what kind of returns I could get if risk wasn’t a factor. Then I thought, why not make this public and see if there were other people interested in what I’m doing. After all maybe people could give me some tips and recommendations. Maybe I can get people to post comments on techniques and strategies that worked for them. I also thought that some people may want to do the same thing I am; take a little money and see if they can turn it into a lot of money by trading it. I will welcome all suggestions, tips and techniques and evaluate them and comment on them. I may use some or I may not but in all cases I will explain my rationalization.

I also invite people that want to try this along with me to make comments on what they are buying, what price and how much and we can track their success. Perhaps there are people that I can learn from and will do better than me. Perhaps there are people out there that can learn from me. Only time will tell.

I have worked for eight years on a retail trading desk for a discount broker. I started as a trader (order taker) and eventually would up as a team leader. Now before some of you say that I have an inside edge; as a discount broker, we were merely order takers. Think about phoning any call center to order a pizza. We are simply order takers taking your order and sending it to market where your order is filled and confirmed back to us. Granted over the years I did learn a lot about how the stock markets work and types of orders etc. but that is nothing that can’t be found out over the web. I thought of myself as standing on the outside of the building (the stock market) looking in through the window. Although I could see what is going on, I was not part of the “action.”

So now this is my chance to see what I can do…..