Jim Makos | Jul 26, 2013 03:46AM ET
If you are familiar with sports trading and like to trade sports events like tennis tournaments or horse races, you’ll have no trouble getting accustomed with the whereabouts of stock trading. Especially forex ). But you’d better specialize in one exchange before testing your strategy to another one; not to mention becoming an expert at a certain industry, knowing its stocks inside out. Just like at sports trading you mostly trade a specific sport or team/player. I’d bet you likely trade short odds, given favorite horses or teams usually have the necessary liquidity and volatility.
We need money, people!
You’ll quickly find out that liquidity and volatility are also very crucial in stock trading. Don’t forget that both fall under the online trading category. Therefore money and price fluctuation are needed at both sports and stock trading in order to make money. In addition online trading is a game of psychology, no matter the instrument you are trading. When you thought that the betting odds would go up, someone else bet that they would go down. Whoever was right, took the other’s money. When a stock trader buys shares, the seller thinks they have found a sucker to sell their shares. Eventually, traders need to find suckers who would take the other side of their trades, either long or short. And if you are losing money at trading, you can guess who the sucker is. I am sure you’ve heard the saying used at poker:
The answer to the original question of this post about the move from sports to stock trading is definitely yes. Converting into a stock trader being a sports trader can be done. Some will find the transition natural, others will have difficulties adapting to the huge world of stock trading. Whatever you do though and despite how many similarities you’ll point out between the two forms of online investing, I’d suggest spending a lot of time educating yourself and paper trading before risking your first dime. Even then you are most likely going to lose money, no matter how successful you have been at sports trading. Take my word for it.
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