Hi, I'm a young single guy who wants to learn about speculative investing (especially options trading). My background is in internet poker where I made my income for the past 2.5 years but now Americans can't play anymore so I need a new source of income. I have plenty of time to learn about investing before I commit a dime to any investments. I'm not looking to invest in mutual funds or in other "slow" vehicles that I'll have to wait 50 years to see benefits from. I want to take on more risk and put in more effort into research and using whatever tools I can to help me make money faster. Things I need help with are: -good free sources of information on how to do options trading and other speculative investments -free practice making investment decisions to develop my skill (on some kind of virtual options trading software or for different types of speculative investments) -any good "newbie guides" available online -recommendations for books to read -What does the learning process in this area look like? (like whats the best way to go from being new to this stuff to being successful at it?) Also any general tips you think someone in my position could use would be welcomed as well. Thanks for reading this
Read everyhthng you can get your hands on: Library Buy books Use Google Have patience grasshopper, your time will come
Screw the learning, I say jump right in short and naked. Too bad you missed today. Would have been a nice quiet day to get your feet wet. Ok sorry had to vent a bit... We have similar backgrounds (except maybe the young part). My biggest piece of advice would be NO $5K COURSES. It's ok to read a few books, and there is tons of free stuff online, but those courses are shams.
Bookmark ForexForex's Elitetrader threads. His LIVE option trades are amazing, take a look at this one in progress. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=224964 All of EliteTrader community can't wait for Tuesday or Wednesday when the trade is opened, then closed the next day or two. ForexForex puts the "ELITE in Elitetrader".
You can just get right into it on ThinkOrSwim's papertrading platform: www.thinkorswim.com Just register but no need to send application information and download the platform. You can set the papertrade account to any size you want and trade any number of options on equities and ETF's. A good intro course at www.optionincomevideos.com/summersale Decent deal. check out the video. It's not free, but you can't find the substance of these 40hour + videos intro material for free. www.cboe.com recommends their mentoring services but that costs upwards of $4k to $6k initial.