There´s no substitude for real market experience. You can read every book on trading, get 100 degress from the best schools and still be one of the 9 guys who failed {out of ten}. I consider myself to be new to the markets... Every day I learn new things and I learn how little I knew the previous day... I don´t think I´ll ever come to the point when I feel I know enough about the markets... that´s what I love about them... everyday is new. About day trading... it certainly isn´t the way to get rich quickly... most times is the quickest way to go broke. If you want to get rich fast, you´ll end up doing some classic mistakes... like overtrading... don´t go too deep until you know how to swim. Start on some highly liquid slow markets, on 100 share blocks. You wont make much $ that way, but you´ll to get the feel of the game without losing your shirt. You´ll make a thousand mistakes, so it´s better to do them with small money, keep the lessons cheap... Manage your risk. Be disciplined. Buy cheap, sell expensive... **************************** Steve. Good points. WM... what you did on those shorts... that´s not trading that´s russian rullette... you where lucky not to shoot yourself in the head.
That was one bad advice, and actually in a way funny. Since OP got that advice from a forum, he should disregard it! Do try to learn from Forums. After all, you can actually ASK questions. You can't ask questions from a book. It either contains the answer to your question or not, and if not, you are out of luck. The advantage of a Forum is that you can interact with people. Sure, you have to use common sense and caution, but don't be affraid to use Forums for information... Thinking about it, yeah your 2K is actually too small for stocktrading, unless you try swingtrading and holding your position for at least a few days. The commission compared to your account size will cut in just too much. But you are papertrading first, so it doesn't matter at this point....
tvarderickko made a good point about books, i think people who keep buyin' books are after the holy grail or haven't got a clue of what tradin' and success is all about...mkt is da only teacher qualified to make u learn, that's cuz u have a personality and cannot follow to the letter what freakin' books tell u to do. u have to find your own way, a system that is profitable to one person can turn out to be a disastrous 1 for another due to the huge diff in approach to risk control and profits factors...i'd recommend to dump books, yes dont even read 1, they just confuse u and delay your progress...u can always read 'em for amusement later and trust me u'll find 'em pretty entertainin'.