I know thats not a way to open a post, but I am be coming frustrated. How does one become a day trader? I have really taken a liking to the market and want to get in. Maybe not live right away. So i paid for a program called Esignal OnDemand. Which right now I have no idea how it works, plus the tech support is hard to work with. Anyway, Can someone give me a basic idea on what I should do, what program/broker are good to sign with. Someone kick me out of the nest, Im really confused.
dont day trade then. Open an account with scottrade or someone till you have a better understanding of what your doing.
I think that the best way to learn most of these software programs is just to bang around them. Don't worry the worst thing that can happen is you break it , then you simply uninstall it and reinstall and your good. If I was going to give advice to someone just starting out I'd tell them to keep very good records. Find the things you are good at, the things you are not good at. Make your strengths count, and do more of what your good at and less of what your not. The most important concepts to learn, in my opinion, is pattern recognition, trends, volatility, gaps and money management. Learn how they all work. Work on putting some type of business plan together where you lay out very carefully exactly what type of situations you are looking for, ie: Where is your edge. When will you trade, and equally important when will you sit in cash and wait for a better opportunity to come about. News is also a great concept to start with. If I could only do one thing it would be this, an "empiphany" that Bo Yoder and I both had together a decade ago when we thought we where creating something new (and discovered that no, we had not in fact invented the wheel after all, but did find something that works very well for us). Simply this: "That which should go up, should go up. That which should go do, should go down". Here is what I mean by that. Let's say a company comes out with great earnings and gets upgraded. Everyone is expecting it to rock n roll, but right out of the gate the stock is weak, maybe it even gaps down. The reaction that 99% of people are having is "these people are stupid...didnt they see the fucking upgrade, didnt they see how great these god damn earnings are!" Of course they did, but whats really happening is that the market is telling you, louad and clear that it does not care, and a stock doing the very opposite of what it "should" do is probably one of the strongest signals of all. Combine that with a little bit of skills with the charts and your going to make a living, and a nice one at that with just one simple concept. Paper trade for a little bit, until you get comfortable...but dont paper trade for too long. It's good for figuring some stuff out..but some people paper trade for years and years. It's like reading about sex, it aint the same! In your case though I think it might help to do it for a month or so just to get comfortable with both the technology you are using and the markets themselves. Hope that helps. Brandon
Thats what im looking for, in no way would i start trading for real. I just need something, anything really, to help me understand it. I know all the knowledge of every trader wont come to me with in a few seconds, its gonna take years. So my real question is, where do I start? and i know that scotrade will start me off, but im not gonna spend 8 bucks per trade, thats just crazy. Once I get Ondemand running, ill start back testing, then slowly make sure I can do things right. But where is something or someone to learn from?
Good luck. There is a lot of great info on this site, you just have to dig for it. One place you could start would be EricP, Austinp ReardenMetal,and my posts.(there are many others too, I just dont have my "thinking cap" on yet to remember On my posts just go back about a year and a half or two years ago, over the last nearly ten years I've posted a ton of info here on ET..most of it from the time I arrived until about a year and a half ago. Brandon
With all due respect, if you have to ask strangers on the internet how to day trade then you have no business doing it. If you're not tied to a long term subscription for ESignal, dump it. There's no use paying good money for something that you don't understand. What you need to do is read books and/or web sites on all types of investing - stocks, mutual funds, commodities (?), options, day trading, swing trading, technical analysis, etc. You also need to spend a lot of time applying what you read to charts. Paper trade on a simulator. Determine what interests you and find out what, if anything, you can trade successfully. Jumping in without proper preparation is a sure way to lose money. Even with good preparation, you may not cut it. Plan for the long term... be patient. The market will still be there when you're ready.
I guess my argument is, where do I learn. Im not going to spend the little money I have right away and poor it into the market. So thats why I ask random people on the internet. Do you have any suggestions? On books. And for simulators? Thats why I paid for the Ondemand from Esignal, so that I could backtest my ideas, and paper trade. Since I couldnt find anything else. Just went it that. Its all for learning experience. I want to find a live quotes simulator, any ideas?
Just read everything that you can get your hands on. Once you have a basic idea, you'll be able to scan the index of any book (or web site topic) and know if it interests you. Some brokers have live quotes simulators. I think Interactive Brokers and ThinkOrSwim. Perhaps readers will posts others. Here's one but I don't know if it's live or any good. But the price is right... http://simulator.investopedia.com/
This is more tied to buy and hold rather than daytrading. You can download a free trial of Ninja Trader and use OpenTick data to paper trade.