Vel, The single most important piece of advice I can give you is www.interactivebrokers.com For someone like you, there is not a question as to what broker to use. They are the one. They have the best executions, the best price, and they have recently added the fastest data feed of all brokers. But the reason why they are especially right for you is that you can trade 100 shares and pay them only $1 including all fees. And trade 100 share lots is exactly what you should do a lot in order to learn how to trade. Once you are confident that you are profitable with 100 share lots (that might be as early as 6 months or as late as 2 years from now, if you trade all day every day), then start doing size, use all the leverage you can get, and it will be reasonably possible to double your capital every year up to the point of half a million or a million dollars. If you want to do more size, don't ask me how it is done, I guess you would need a different approach for that than mine. You can't just fade intra-day spikes with 100k shares like you can with 2k. Or expect to get filled on a stop etc.
And the single most important piece of advice I can give you is figure out exactly how much you are willing to lose before entering every trade. Do not, I repeat, do not hope for a turn-around, do not average down, take the loss and move on to the next trade. Good trades sometimes lose. Accept them and move on...
Vel, everyone here has the desire. Every trader I know has the desire and hunger to claim their stake out of the market. We wouldn't be in this profession otherwise. But let me tell you, it takes a hell of a lot more than desire. When a newbie comes onto this site and doesn't even know the basics of trading, and claims that they will make a million dollars in five years, I'm sure it annoys many people. If you stepped into a hospital with no education or knowledge of how to be a doctor, and claimed that you were going to be a top physician... I'm sure you would be met with a lot of skepticism. Trading is a profession. As with any other profession, if you want to be the best, be prepared to work your ass off. I'm not saying it can't be done. I wouldn't be doing it otherwise. Just be prepared to work hard.
one more thing... instead of telling a bunch of strangers that you are going to make a million dollars in five years through trading, tell someone important in your life.
I told my best friend. He at least has faith in me. I'm not one to back out of anything I say i want to do. It was only a few short years ago i was totally physically unmotivated to change my appearance, which was a 175 lb, overwight and out of shape guy. I said i was going to change myself, and i eventually overcame laziness, instilled discipline into my diet, and I did what i set out to do. I firmly believe that if you can overcome eating habits and physical laziness everything else is cake. I didn't and won't tell anyone in my family about the stock thing because I know what will come out of their mouths already. "Pssht, yeah ok, keep dreaming". That's the kind of stuff I have to put up with, and I'm tired of negativity. I'm sick of the misery loves company scenario. According to them, the only way to get rich is to hit the lottery. You can never open up a business. You will have to work for someone else your whole life. So basically they don't believe in the world around them.
Sounds like my family, especially my father. But guess what! After giving him a year to get used to the fact that I trade, he now suddenly encourages me to open up any kind of business I want, except trading. Apparently the overwhelmingly terrible stupidity wanting to become a trader has made him change his mind about other, more "fool-proof" business ideas. Now I would say he thinks: "To thrive and prosper, you have to be a 9 to 5 slave, but it is also possible to survive running your own business. Obviously you won't enjoy the joys only a large company can provide, but you can still kind of make it. As long as you are not a daytrader." It's all relative, isn't it?
Why don't you just show him your account statements? He is your old man afterall -- show him it can be done.
Better not to tell the people you know. If you tell a bunch of strangers and they tell you you're a fool, so what you don't know them. When the people you know are negative, it hurts. It hurts because you know them, and it hurts because they are the ones who should be giving you emotional support, and instead they are trying to drain any confidence out of you. You need that confidence to be able to succeed.
Just a thought. There is an order feature at Interactive Brokers and I'm sure many others - Volume Weighted Average Price. I have never used it but it appears that you put in your order and get the average price for each half hour period during the day. I might not have this right and it's not really what you were asking. Geo.
DON'T think about it. Just do your thing. Are you trading to prove a point or to make money? I started trading to prove a point. Now that I realize that was stupid, I trade only for one reason -- to make money.