I found financial data was the main component to establishing confidence in my Multicharts trading systems, but I'd been trading for a long time and started in large cap stocks swing trading mostly on news and mystical quantitative conjecture. Do that first, and learn what produces value. When you know that, the chart just confirms what's happening and only with automatons do you stand any chance of being profitable, at least that's how I felt. It's highly possible you aren't a newb, but maybe not, so I'll tell you it is ridiculous to go straight to forex and futures, but everyone can pick their own poison until they're immune, and you aren't yet. Try trading stocks on your own, but don't get overly concerned with predicting turnarounds. Only buy stocks with positive earnings is as easy a rule of thumb as it gets.
TD Ameritrade has some commission free ETF's that you can trade. That'll allow you to start with any amount and no disadvantage for a small account. Read a lot of books like Alexandre Elder's "Trading for a Living." Trading is a much bigger endeavor than I realized when I started. I failed for the first 5 years as a trader because I wanted to believe trading was about being smart, and about being right more often than wrong. I thought if I could pick the right direction, I could win. Nope. Even with being right 6 or 7 times out of 10, I managed to lose. Money management is important, Risk management Position sizing is important, Get really familiar with mathematical concepts like exponential loss and gain. After a 1% loss you need a 1.01% gain to break even. After a 10% loss you need 11.11% to break even. After a 50% loss you need a 100% gain to break even, and after a 99% loss you need a 9900% gain to break even. Familiarity with this exponential curve will help you decide where on the curve you'd like to be to have the best chance at success over time. You'll need a strategy for entering trades and sizing your position that fits your loss per trade parameter. Finally, you should be aware that most people who trade, even the ones that have a winning plan, have an extremely difficult time believing that their plan is telling them the best approach for trading. Most people have a plan and second guess it or ignore it. As much time as you spend working on a system, money management, risk management, position sizing, and understanding mathematical concepts that are important to giving yourself the advantage, put twice as much effort into finding a way to believe that your method knows better than you do. If your system has a statistical advantage, learn to relax and trust the law of averages to let it win in the long run regardless of the outcome of each trade. You're the only one who can get in the way of a winning system. Learn to trust it like a kid learns to trust that water will hold him up if he just presses into it and relaxes. That's pretty much what I wish someone had told me 6 years ago. Best of luck.
This is a pretty damn good piece of advice. Live and die by this nugget and you increase your odds of making it exponentially!!!
I agree but that is part of what makes this advice so good. Before you get there hold on to your capital. You need to know you've got a positive expectation to take repetitive risk.
This is why I automate my strategies. It takes out the human element which can destroy a profitable strategy. I also don't have to sit in front of a screen all day.
just trade high priced, high quality stocks. at least they trend. futures/forex are much more volatile and unpredicatable.