Day trading during the Corona virus pandemic

I’ve been sheltering in place for a month. I leave the house once per week to go to the grocery store, there is always a line at the store with people standing 6 ft apart. I wear a mask, everyone wears masks hiding their mouths.

I got worried we wouldn’t have enough cash if the stock market crashed so I sold $40K of amazon stock. The stock market dipped 30% and I was relieved. A few days later stocks started to bounce up and down. Tesla was down 30% then up 10% then down again. The daily swings where intoxicating so I decided to start day trading. In the morning I’d buy a few stocks that where down and in the evening id sell. Some days I made 15% some days I lost 15%. My strategy was not working, I might as well have been gambling. I decided to stop.

Some billionaire investor made 2000% in the first few months of the pandemic. How did he do so well and I did so badly? He used data. As soon as he heard about the virus be bought a large share of a company that made N95 masks and he shorted the stock market. How did he know to do these two things? He looked at data from past pandemics and identified the most common trends.