You may have been in a position whenever you buy, stock goes down and when you sell, it shoots up. Frequently maximising your losses and minimised profits. First of all, you need to have the guts to be able to take initial losses, cut the losses when it reaches your personal threshold and not continue to let the losses drag on to even bigger losses. Don't try to go against the market. Most of the time, painful lesson. Keep short profits and slowly increase dividend yield stocks to generate passive income so that the extra $ can be used to buffer more when you trade.