I love this place. This is my first post but I always read what others have to say. I have been trading for few months and I made my share of mistakes. The good thing that I did was that I never took a big loss. I had plenty of small losses but no big gain. I had read many books on trading but somehow I did not get something right. I felt that I need more knowledge and more confidence so I stopped trading for two months. I read more books during that time and watched the market. End of OCtober I felt that I am ready to start trading again. First week of November I made my first trade. I am a full time student and I work 30 hours a week so my strategy is swing trading. My short-term goal is to make $250 a week. I need to be successful at making $250/week for a month or two or maybe more then my goal is going to be to make $500 a week. I open a position on Monday and close the position by Friday. I use float analysis to screen for longs. I still need to gain more confidence before I can short stocks. After I find the stocks that I want to go long I look for another confirmation. The price must be towards the high of yesterdays close. I use Tony Oz's risk-reward calculator to decide whether or not I should enter the trade. I don't have the calculator but I have set-up something like that on Excel. My first trade was BEAS on November 5. It had a complete float turnover a week ago and it bounced off support @10 and it was trading higher. I got in at 12.92 and it has moved higher since then. I have increased my stop everytime it moves up but it is wide enough so that I don't get stopped out due to daily noise. When I first started trading few months ago I wanted to swing trade but my stops were daytrading stops. I got stopped out a lot but no big gains. Now I buy less shares but have a wider stop. Below is a list of few books that I found very helpful and opened a whole new window for me. The art of contrary thinking. The precision profit float indicator. Trade your way to financial freedom. Market Wizards (new & old) How to take money from wall street. Looking forward to learn more from everybody else.