美语词汇掌故第 50 课： In the Red: Better to Be in the Black-2

When a run on the banks was starting, there was not much they could do, said a banking expert.

Day trading is a new expression about a system that lets investors trade directly on an electronic market system.

The system is known as NASDAQ, short for The National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation. It was the first completely computerized stock market.

It sells stocks of companies not listed on any stock exchange. Many high technology companies are listed on it.

Day trading companies provide a desk and a computer system to an investor who wants to trade.

Individuals must provide fifty thousand dollars or more to the trading company to pay for the stocks they buy.

Thousands of other investors do day trading from computers in their homes.

A day trader watches stock prices carefully. When he sees a stock rise in price, he uses the computer to buy shares of the stock.

If the stock continues to rise in price in the next few minutes, the day trader sells the shares quickly to make a small profit.

Then he looks for another stock to buy. If a stock goes down instead of up, he sells it and accepts the loss.

The idea is to make a small profit many times during the day. Day traders may buy and sell stocks hundreds of times each day.

Many day traders lose all their money in a week or so. Only about thirty percent succeed in earning enough from their efforts to continue day trading.