With 10K, why not start trading options or futures. However do all the reading you can. Here is a good book (well personnaly i found it good, i don"t not about the other). Charles Cottle coulda, woulda, shoulda. Don't be affaid. Trading is like sex. At first you're not sure if you gonna like it, but eventualy it will be your only reason for living. good luck mate (well luck doesn't have anything to do with it)
Here's my two cents ... For $10K, stick with stocks. For starters, unlike futures, options and forex, stocks are not strictly a zero-sum game. The market boom of the nineties was generated by stocks, not futures, options or forex. You can just hold on to stocks and still make money. Can't do that with futures, options or forex. Next, stock data is free (both price and volume; charts and historical; even a few built-in indicators): http://finance.yahoo.com/ There are other free stock-data sources as well, like MSN. Good luck trying to find free futures or options data. There are discount brokers where you can do stock trades for a few bucks a roundtrip. Options are sucker plays for most traders: http://www.rb-trading.com/q_a.html You can trade ETFs just like stocks, if you really crave diversification. Otherwise, use a valid trading strategy to find and stick with the best stocks. Not that large a number to keep track of; you can do it with a modern spreadsheet. Day-trading is a sucker play for most who try it. Also, since you have a job, you'll want to do position trading with EOD data anyway. The good news is that you can make more money than most day-traders by staying with extended trends. Check out this website for some advice on short-term/position trading: http://members.aol.com/davetrends/ I don't buy everything he says but there's some good nuggets there. Volume matters. Anybody who says it doesn't, doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. I don't care how "successful" he is with his price-only strategy, leaving out volume anaysis is leaving money on the table. And you can bet some of those price-only advocates are themselves also doing volume analysis. They just don't want you to realize that. For stocks, be wary of anything with an average daily volume under 50,000 shares unless you've thoroughly researched the stock and assured yourself of its integrity. You want to be able to get in when you want in, and get out when you want out. Liquidity is your friend. Illiquidity is your enemy. Finally, read everything you can about trading, but with a grain of salt. Verify every bit of advice you see for yourself. There are some real nice people in these forums but there are also some of the nastiest sociopaths you never wanted to meet. Don't ask for names; read and you'll soon be able to tell for yourself which is which. Remember: you are "the competition", and some people here (and elsewhere) take that ruthlessly serious. They are predators, and they see you as a new fish to be filleted. There's some great advice in these forums but there's also a lot of ignorant blatherings as well as a lot of deliberately misleading pure crap. Some people here like to help, some others like to play headgames for their own amusement and hopeful profit ... at your expense. Verify everything you read and hear. Good trading.
I started out the same way , nobody that i new ever traded stocks or anything else although i did know of a couple of people that bought and held for what seemed like forever. Some people aren't able to hold, they have to trade short term. Starting under 10k you'll be limited to 3 round trips per week at most brokerages. I.B has a universal account that can help .(universal allows you to trade nearly anything from one account). If you are planning to trade short term you might want to learn about Economic indicators- all of them ...inflation , employment , business measuring, interest rates all that stuff and a couple of good books on the subject of technical analysis- and learn about markets that affect one another- for example gold moved opposite to the U.S dollar for quite a while- does gold move with oil ? does the price of oil affect company's balance sheets ? there are tons of stuff to consider and it will take a few years to learn. If you are going to invest , that's a different subject , but for trading , you have to be able to go long and short- some people won't sell short and become very emotional. Anyhow , i can identify with you at this point- wish you well.
I think that someone right now mentioned bill o'neil, and that is a good idea, and there is a section on mutual funds in his book how to make money in stocks which i would suggest for you right now. trading is something that takes years of practice to make a living at. and by then hopefully your nest egg has grown a little. i think that there is a mutual fund that trades canslim so that could be an option. all the best and play it safe
Check out my experience at http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=68647 It's been a rough time for me. I hope this helps you not make stupid mistakes in the beginning like I did.