that blacksmith learned from someone,worked in a shop probably and had enough knowledge before he took a chance, you could start by learning how to chart weekly ,daily and 30 minute trendlines and watch how several markets interact when a tl is near,try watching dow,es,djt,nq,and tick or uvol vs dvol ratio
I have only one thing to say about waiting, watching and papertrading. Trading is like having sex. There is no substitute for actually doing it. Did you pass up your first chance to have sex when you were a kid? Do you regret it? Makes no diffunce if she was fat and ugly. You'd have learned sumpin'. Of course the downside of taking my advice is that you might get to liking fat ugly women. Like me trading NQ.
While sex paralel has some truths, it ain't a good one. BTW, I am only talking about futures trading. These days simulators with real time data on liquid contract are extremely good. The point is that unless consistently profitable on demo, no one should even try life trading. Once demo stage is passed, only then should one trade with 1 contract for a long time, and only if enough margin is earned added a second one. If not successful on demo, no way it will work in real trading.
If you can put up the money to pattern day trade consider starting with 100 SPY or QQQ. Make sure you get a very low minimum commission -- $1 minimums do exist -- and once you are winning at 100 go to 200. Once you get up to 700 or 800 shares and are comfortable with the risk switch to ES or NQ. Once you settle in with the index futures begin look at the major currencies and crude (CL). I'm not suggesting any of it is easy but if you make it the payoff can be very substantial.
thank u all for all the good and practical advice...especially u ammo, those were some pretty good practical tips! swam noir, what is the difference between the SPY/QQQ and ES/NQ? I know ES/NQ are index futures, but my question is what are the differences between them, and why only start with SPY/QQQ and once mastered only then move unto ES/NQ? btw, just finished reading `The Complete TurtleTrader" by Michael Covel. Was always interested on knowing the details on this legend Currently reading "The technical analysis course", an old book I found on the library, so far very good...Ias ammo recommended, I`m gonna start checking for price movement reactions to trendlines...
Rod, ES and NQ are futures contracts and SPY etc. are ETFs. A single futures contract is about $65,000 in stock at current market while in the ETF's you can vary the size as low as you like and limit your risk. To trade 100 SPY (about $13,000 of stock which is a great size to start at) you will need a margin account (a cash account will not enable you to go short) with a stockbroker with very low commissions. There are deals out there to trade 100 SPY for $1.00.