hi, found this forum randomly, saw some good threads and thought why not start a thread and see if i could get some help. basically im 21, play poker, go to ucsd for bioengineering and have about 25k to trade with. ive been trading for a couple months, but really dont know what im doing. i read the news and basically buy when i think the stock is coming back up and sell when i have a nice profit. anyways ive always believed that whenever you start something you should get a good book or website and read up. thats what i did with poker and it worked well. so if anyone wants to recommend a good read that would be awesome. if someone whos done this for a while wants to be a mentor that would be even better( but i dont know what i can really offer in exchange for a mentor). alright thats all, sorry if this is considered spam at all.
The 3 very best books I've read on trading during the past 9 years: - Rules of the Trade, David S. Nassar - Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Edwin Lefèvre - Against the Gods, Peter L. Bernstein - Trading in the Zone, Michael Douglas - Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns, Thomas N. Bulkowski And the best advice I can give you: trade small size while you learn and read a lot!
Market Wizards (jack schwager) and for entertainment: Education of a Speculator (Victor Neiderhoffer)
There will be other data/charting suggestions - here's mine... 1. Open an account with IB so you get free real time data. 2. Get Ensign for charting. It's a great charting package but here's 2 aces for you 3. Do lots of trials and tests on the chart simulator and simutlaor broker placing paper trades on strategies you are testing 4. Inside Ensign is Echat. This allows you to see the charts of lots of diffetent traders. Try Bline room to start with. Copy and test. There are lots of free templates from traders that would take forever to develop - try these and borrow, change, adapt until you have something that's unique to you. You can text the traders - ask for a time after hours to chat and get help understanding their approach. 5. Once you have a strategy that works download a trading platform (I love Zeorline Trader) and use it in sim mode so you can see exactly how thing will look when you trade for real including your execution page layout. 6. Now you are ready to start if you are profitable on paper. Begin with the minimum contract size ie 1 contract/lot. If you can't make it with a little cash you certainly won't with more. If you do this you will progress 100X faster than reading books.
I think Link's "High Probability Trading" is a pretty good introductory work. He does not candy coat it like so many do. That said, about all a book can do for you is acquaint you with terminology, etc.
yeah, if u already have a clue about the mechanics of the stock mkt dump the idea of buyin' any books...u might have to get rid of the only few good ideas u have about tradin' just by readin' some of the stupid suggestions usually found on that crap. open an acct., maybe at ib that offers a paper tradin' facility and learn everythin' about order routin', etc. then place a few virtual orders just to get comfy with tws. once u see u dont make silly mistakes no more go live with 20-50shares and work your way up from there. follow bloomie tv durin'/after the session, lots of useful info there. this actually is the best route to learn how to trade imo. best
Well, as you may already know, there's only three kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't