I recommend you listen to Kenny Rogers "The Gambler" This is the best advice you can when trading. Once you understand those basic concepts you will ahead of the game.
This is inevitable ...these methods are a much better way of modelling "what's happening". I like it in theory, but I don't like it because I ain't in on it.
Good advice is to ignore most of what people around here post, especially the above character ElSegundo. He's an multi alias stealth vendor with an agenda. Formally know as marketsurfer and a whole host of other names.
Funny my first trade was buying US bonds when I was 14. Interest rates were do My advice is stick to SPY ETF. When trading you want something that minimizes risk of ruin and trying to speculate/gamble on penny stocks, or single stock is too risky. SPY ETF is very liquid and trades with a penny bid/ask spread. A second choice if you want a little more movement is the IWM ETF which is also very liquid and offers exposure to the Russel 2000 index, while the SPY ETF offers exposure to the S&P 500 index. Another nice thing about SPY is you can watch the S&P Minis trading after the markets are closed so you can get a feel on how things might look the next day before regular market opening. I always monitor the ES even when not trading. If you focus on those two ETFs you can learn how these two tickers over the next few years behave during differing economic conditions and geopolitical conditions. You can even hedge your trades using options to protect yourself from a big adverse movement while you are learning to trade SPY or ETF. Forget about chasing the stock of the day trying to make a big buck. All you will do is end up losing your money. Also do not pay for any kind of special make money guru training or news letters. Its all snakeoil sellers trying to take your money since they cannot themselves make money trading.
I was also trading at your age ... (on demo, at first) ... If it helps, this was how I learned ... (a) By reading well-recommended, well-established, mainstream, orthodox trading textbooks, published by well-recommended, well-established, mainstream, orthodox publishers (i.e. "peer-reviewed" and "quality controlled") and avoiding internet "information"; (b) By getting in thousands of hours of screen-time after understanding all the basics of probability and statistics that any trader has to learn, to become profitable (so that my first 3 years' experience was genuinely 3 years' experience rather than the same one month's experience repeated 36 times over); (c) By remaining aware, at all times, that in a field of endeavour with a huge turnover of participants very few of whom ever achieve profitability, most of the readily available "information", and especially the apparent consensuses of opinion, are always far more likely to be misguided than helpful; (d) By having expert tuition available (from a successful family member in the trade); (e) By NOT trading with real money until I'd proven, repeatedly and exhaustively and exhaustingly, on demo accounts, that I could avoid the five classic mistakes of aspiring traders, which are ... Not having a genuine edge (for which a common reason is reliance on inadequate, defective or mistaken "information": aspiring traders quite commonly seek short-cuts, imagining that if they just copy something that "works", they'll be able to bypass most of the actually-required education and experience phases); 2. Confusing entry-methods with trading systems (for which a common reason is the deeply mistaken - but widely-held - impression that if one enters at a good time, everything else will somehow, magically "work out well" even without specifically considering trade-management subsequent to the entry- it won't); 3. Under-capitalisation (for which a common reason is a misguided belief-set about what's typically achievable and over what time-frame: most people significantly overestimate what they can achieve quickly and easily, while significantly underestimating what they could achieve slowly and with difficulty); 4. Excessive position-sizing (for which a common reason is just a general lack of statistical/probabilistic knowledge - most people aren't mathematically gifted, and it's really, really difficult to make a success of trading without some real understanding of the statistics and probabilities involved); 5. Lack of patience, discipline and "psychological aspects" (on which I'm far too Aspergerish to be able or willing to comment further, myself, as I happen to have more patience and discipline than almost anyone else - and nearly pathologically so!). Those five may also overlap, to some extent. I can't prove a word of it, needless to say, but I very strongly suspect that combinations of these five reasons, collectively, probably account for about 99% of all "aspiring trader failure". These are the books that most helped me, and enabled me to trade profitably ... Profitability & Systematic Trading (Michael Harris) Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom (Van K. Tharp - an outstanding starting-point, especially the second half of the book) Beyond Technical Analysis (Tushar S. Chande) Understanding Price Action (Bob Volman) The Mathematics of Money Management: Risk Analysis Techniques for Traders Ralph Vince (we all need some reliable understanding of what's in this book, although not necessarily from this specific source, before trading with real money) Naked Forex: High-Probability Techniques for Trading Without Indicators (Alex Nekritin & Walter Peters - worth reading even if you don't intend to trade forex) Daytrading (Joe Ross) (this is an updated re-issue of an earlier book - "Trading by the Minute", I think it was called) Trading The Ross Hook (Joe Ross) (I keep coming back to this one again and again, because it's simple and logical and helpful, and the whole concept is based on one of the soundest principles of price action trading, namely "buy the dips in an uptrend and sell the rallies in a downtrend") A Mathematician Plays The Market (John Allen Paulos) Fooled By Randomness (Nassim Nicholas Taleb - very worthwhile!) Why People Believe Weird Things (Michael Shermer) - this book and Taleb's, just above, are hugely helpful - albeit indirectly - for "understanding what's going on in forums"! Trading Price Action Trends - Technical Analysis of Price Charts Bar by Bar for the Serious Trader (Al Brooks) Trading Price Action Trading Ranges - Technical Analysis of Price Charts Bar by Bar for the Serious Trader (Al Brooks) Trading Price Action Reversals - Technical Analysis of Price Charts Bar by Bar for the Serious Trader (Al Brooks) "Warning": Al Brooks' set of three textbooks is kind of badly written and very badly edited (especially considering who the publisher is), and pretty difficult to plough through, but their content's excellent and was super-helpful to me, so those are a kind of "mixed recommendation": I actually think his online video course is much, much better and more helpful and more approachable, but it's also more expensive ($250, I think - but that's still very good value, in my opinion, for about 37 hours of instructional videos).
No need to be at goldman. I trade my own capital and work for no firm. As long as you have a good chunk of capital to put at risk and you manage it correctly you can do well for yourself with no need to work for some big time company. Not being a professional means you get the cheap platform rates My degree is in Electrical Engineering. not Finance.
My advice is look into real estate investing instead. Financial markets change, the need for people to rent does not. RE can lead to compounded wealth building and early financial independence. The edge needed for this form of investing is 'time' - you have lots of it ahead of you. Scratch together enough money to buy your first fixer upper at the age of 20 and rent it out. Then use the built up equity to buy another property every one or 2 years. I would have loved this advice when I was a young man.