25 Sep 09 Regarding Day Trading and Forex?

TSSA! asked:


Background: Fundamentals, with an investing strategy out of the Graham playbook (by distressed, unloved or otherwise underpriced securities). Risk is minimized by having a margin of safety, higher upside than down, and by buying into companies that can be understood and predicted down the line.

However, finding a good opportunity tends to leave at least some cash floating around. Aside from dumping it into a placeholder stock like BRK.B, moneymarket, etc. I am interested in utilizing, to some small degree, daytrading.

Basically:
(1) How is risk managed in security day trading? Forex trading?

(2) Do the few successful traders operate by intuition or determinism?

(3) How wide of a scope to most traders take? Ten stocks? One hundred? All of them? Similarly, how wide of a scope do forex’ers employ?

(4) Is there a way to get a hold of raw market data, outside of the wacky software like eSignal, etc?

Please do not try and pitch a trading system. Thanks.

Myrtle