Just when I was gonna give up on this thread from all the negativity, more people posted some great proactive information Thanks to all that posted some proactive solutions! I have run through a few online courses over at CBOE, but its been awhile and I forgot some stuff. They are great educational classes, I'm gonna go check out the videos you mentioned. I was trading in a virtual account, but I limited my purchasing power to around $1000 in order to get use to using limited funds. I havent made much, but I haven't lost any... yet, I know its only a matter of time. Its such a mental fight against your emotions when your watching the stocks move around. Before this I was only trading long, where I would only check my stocks once a week. What mind trip it is to watch them minute by minute. The same patterns emerge but at a much faster rate. Although I find it is a lot easier to pick tops and bottoms just by watching the way it bounces near its limits. Its like watching a battle play out before your eyes, some want it to go down, some want it to go up. But everyone seems to know its a ceiling or floor. So the stock will sit in limbo for a few minutes bouncing back and fourth before one side finally gives in. I will watch it very close, because you can see almost a cascading affect just before it makes a push to the upside or downside. Thats when I have about 30 seconds to place my order before it shoots up or down to the next ceiling or floor. Optionsxpress has a really cool streaming tool that lets you see the exact orders placed for the bid and ask prices, they call it a pressure chart or something. It is updated every second almost and you can see how many orders are placed below the stock price and how many are placed above the stock price. Its very interesting to watch. It shows the numbers from like 10 different stock markets. I like the looks of the strategy, everything looks so much simpler on a hind sight chart. But I would really like to research oil futures because I dont think we have seen the last of the volatility, I think its just begun to get interesting. I'm gonna go learn how to trade futures, since I have never done it before. I dont even know how to look up a chart for a future. But I'm gonna subscribe to your journal and start skimming through the posts to see what I can learn from you guys that are trading it right now. On a side note, I might take up some of the advice from the people who were being somewhat pessimistic and drive down to Jackpot Nevada with a few friends to "take a vacation" and see if I can get some extra funds, My wife is an excellent blackjack player