Thank you for the link to the help section. Missed that portion, thought you could only change font, color and bold text... No interest in the other...
If you live near a good library system, buying books may be unnecessary. I request books online from any library in my county, and they deliver them to my local library for free. For very technical books that I might want to have around for reference, I use half.com.
Made my first trade with $500 and turned it into $850 in a month. Fact is, you're not going to be able to trade like you think you should be trading with that kind of money. Use a flat-fee broker that can give you good service. I still use Scottrade for some of my accounts (IRA's and the like) and like them. You must learn all you can and stay realistic in your executions and expectations. I assume you are young so you have plenty of time. Start with stocks and fundamental analysis. Get an education and then a good job, but always study about investing, trading, how markets work. Read all you can about successful traders and investors. Always stay invested and build your wealth. Trading is a learned skill that takes a lot of time and money to become successful. Learning how to invest successfully is a lot easier (at least for me it is). I don't think you can really ever become successful in the long run by being a good trader and bad investor, and yes they are two totally different things. Why do you think the institutions have both and keep them seperate? In the end, $500 is not enough capital to trade with. It is enough to get you started down the road to becoming a successful trader though. I'd say that you can give yourself a shot at trying trading as a career if you have no/very little debt, 1 year of basic living expenses and $50K in your trading account. It's a long road. Do you have the discipline to do it? Time will tell. Good Luck!
I don't understand most of youzzz people. He asks HOW to trade and you all tell him not to trade (correctly). He seems content to trade, so what is the best strategy. No question the risk on the first 2 or 3 trades is the whole account. Either buy some options or take a short term trade. Probably need to risk 300-500$ on the first two trades. Hope you can profit 100-300$ on each trade. If you can win the first three trades it will give you a little breathing room to take some losses. Can anyone string 3 winning trades in a row with low drawdown.
Bad idea, if you think one trader can't make up his mind whether to hold or go long. Think what happens when you get 4 or 5 involved. Best option, a penny saved is a penny earned. Borrow 2k from a friend, open an account, then withdraw the 2k and keep your 500 in. Go for stocks that have a value of less than $25 a share otherwise your wasting your time. This is not a recommendation, however if you were good enough you could play Countrywide. Current price around $10. The stock jumped up 18% on Friday. Chances are Monday might not be so good, but hey I'm not God.
He's better off getting a lesson and losing $500 in the markets, as opposed to losing $10,000 or more. I say go for it, but realize you can, and probably will lose the money with ease. Once you understand there's a lot more to the markets than meets the eye, buy a couple of highly recommended books and start studying.
Maybe I made myself not clear: I'm not gonna do anything with that 500$ before I read at least some good books and know some basic strategies. I started already, I've read a book on commodities and right now am reading "Trading in the zone" which is a really good one. The next will be 1 or 2 good books on technical analysis. As I told I'm going to spend the next month quite intensively on the topic since I have vacations then. But the issue is: Since I'm still a student I know I'm not going to have thousands to trade with within at least the next 2 years, so I want to use what I got now: 500$.