Yahoo has pretty nice EOD data.. with historical prices in exportable format to excel too. 20 minute delay, though.. so it really is limited to EOD.
I am a full time PC tech working for a non-profit company and I travel miles every day to fix PC's, so I am in front of a PC many hours . I kind of am able to spend as much time as I want fixing PC's. . I used to swing trade stocks in 2004 , but now I am trading forex. It gives me a chance, after 4:30 PM , to watch charts and the market itself. I also look at the rates on my PDA and have a laprop with me I can connect throu my PDA to the internet. ( a bit slow though)
Anyone trading from Singapore? Well the U.S. markets open at 9:30pm (or 10:30pm) till 4am (or 5am), so I can still keep a day job and trade late nights. I left my job last month so am trading fulltime now. Kind of boring during the day without colleagues and social contacts.
Yeah bstay, I noticed that to be true myself. That's why it's more important now than ever to maintain my relationships with my family and the circle of friends that I had before I went to trading full-time. I find it's also good to get new hobbies (Argentine Tango, anyone?) and do things that constantly broaden my horizons, while still doing what I love to do. (As far as the work stuff is concerned, uh, I don't know about you, but I live in NYC, it's actually very competitive here, and those folks weren't really my friends, anyway). Later, Jimmy
I'm an EE too. Or at least I used to be. I had the same dilemma as you so when the buyoffs came around I took it and I am starting out with one of the prop firms now. Many EE's trade. Some firms in fact prefer engineers.
I'm working on setting up an auto trade system, last week it made 5% on it's first trial run (paper trading) with the IB simulator. This may be the way to go for many people working during the day.
lol- well, i hate to buy into your stereotype, but i myself blew it out bigtime when i was first starting out. very ridiculously impulsive. i'm more of an engineering/math/analytical type, though (which women aren't supposed to be either, btw), and it only took me a year of blowouts to learn my lesson. then i was out of trading for awhile, then more of a learning curve, and now i'm trader extraordinaire.... yeah, hubby knows he's a lucky dude. but seriously, i think the impulsiveness may also be a characteristic of newbies, especially those with little or no guidance from more seasoned investors about the downside of what can happen....hey remember that guy on tv in the nineties who was a daytrader and lost a bunch of money and went postal, killing several people from his daytrading firm? also, i've known guys personally who lost a ton in the 2000 crash. i was trading then, but more disciplined than most, so that i didn't do the blowout thing at that time.