Options and Wealth?

The recent trouncing of the stock market has led me to a great internal debate / struggle...

Up until the start of September I had a nice little strategy going. Buy little blocks of shares, each time adding another dividend stream and try and grow my wealth that way.

Then I got all excited by the market volatility and fancied a bit of day trading and I sold out of 3 dividend producing shares to buy some call options on Impala Platinum and WHAM! I got the direction wrong.

Apart from losing money on the trade (I kept a portion of the position open though because I still think its the right call given the anticipated emerging market currency issues), I have also lost 3 dividend streams.

The irony of all of this though is that the shares that I have sold out of, have actually weathered the storm quite well.

The whole situation got me thinking - why do I bother to try and time the market to make "quick bucks" off of futures or options trading when a strategy of accumulation seems to work better?!

I had previously enjoyed some good successes trading in the options market, but at the end of the day, chasing a quick buck has actually moved me backwards.

Maybe its a fools game?

Stock brokers consistently tell stories about clients who churn their accounts over each year. Sometimes they end up, sometimes they end down - but at the end of the day, they don't consistently make any money by trading options.

Their is nothing scientific about my statement and I don't for a moment think that you can't make real money trading in the options and futures market. I do however wonder whether traders sometimes delude themselves that they are building WEALTH when they're actually gambling on trading profits...?