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Day Trading Takes Guts, Quick Fingers

"The North American Securities Administrators Association determined in a recent report that 70 percent of day traders 'will not only lose, but will almost certainly lose everything they invest.' As many as 100,000 of the approximately 8 million North Americans who buy and sell stocks online are believed to be at least part-time day traders.

"The Securities and Exchange Commission has warned that 'most individual investors do not have the wealth, the time or the temperament to make money and to sustain the devastating losses that day trading can bring.'

"'I'll never work for a living again after doing this,' Beardsly said during a brief lull in the action. 'Why would I?'

"Most day traders only know that certain ticker symbols can be relied on to post wide swings in value, which is how a day trader makes money.

"Speed does matter. Day traders who subscribe to services providing real-time market access-and pay between $9 and $19 in commissions per trade-are always out in front of active traders using services like E- Trade, Schwab and Fidelity.

"Beardsly sees himself as being in a constant struggle with the institutional heavyweights who are buying and offering shares on a second- by-second basis. Surveying his performance for the day, Beardsly announced that he had made $8,366 trading about 115,000 shares.

"An impressive performance, and one that ProTrader employees readily concede cannot be easily imitated by others. 'There's a lot of people calling themselves day traders who shouldn't call themselves day traders,' said Hsu, the branch manager. 'But still they keep trading. Why? I don't know.'"

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