Day Trading

Without knowing what you already know, it's hard to know what to tell you. What I will do is give you a link to great site for explaining the tax implications of trading stocks.

http://www.fairmark.com/capgain/

You can choose how much of the material you want to read, but I suggest you be sure to read the section on "wash sale" rules given the way you described your trading.

Most trading tips providers or signal providers don't work. You can read reviews on most of them on http://www.forextopten.com and http://www.forexpeacearmy.com .

There is a great website called Sharebuilder.com that will lead you through what you need to know. They have a great starter kit that costs about $50.00 but they give you a $50.00 certificate to purchase stock with. It is a very well executed website and the documentation should point you in the right direction.

I'm giving you some web sites to check out for day traders and swing traders. This will give you a "feel".
http://www.alphatrends.net/
http://www.thekirkreport.com/
http://www.slopeofhope.com/
http://www.tradingwithtk.com/
http://www.thinkorswim.com/
http://www.redoption.com/

Also, some good books to start with are;
Trading In the Zone, Mark Douglas
Mastering The Trade, John Carter
High Probability Trading, Link
Trade Your Way To Financial Freedom, Tharp

Learn the basics of "Technical Analysis" before you read these books. Understand Candlestick Charting, Moving Averages, Support & Resistance, RSI, Channels etc.

There are many great books out there…. Don't read any of them until you've gone through these. Don't ever underestimate the importance of money management, position sizing & trading psychology.

This will take at least a year to get through. Do it and you'll save yourself from many costly mistakes.

The most important thing to look at is risk versus reward. It takes a lot of skill to be successful at day trading, and a lot of cash. According to SEC regulations, you must maintain an account balance (minimum equity level) of at least $25,000. However, you will only be classified as a day trader if you buy and sell (or sell short and buy to cover) the same security within one day, and do this four or more times over five days or less. This means that you can make a day trade (or two or three) and not have to worry about your account being frozen, but make a habit of it and you will see your account suspended for up to 90 days.
Besides account requirements, there's also taking into consideration commissions versus trade value. To buy and sell stock can cost anywhere from $10-$40 overall, so you should be expecting profit exceeding this before entering a trade, which means trade size is a key component. Average daily volume of a stock wil lgive you an idea of what you can expect to be able to buy or sell.
Utilizing different technical indicators such as stochastics, RSI, MACD, moving averages, and price change patterns could give insight into possible future price changes, but these are all speculative and should be used with caution. I would caution anyone who is a beginner trader/investor about day trading. For short term gains, it's better, and less risky, to find stocks about to increase over the next few days/weeks/months. You'll more than likely realize more gains at less of a risk. It's up to you to learn how to do this correctly, but it can be a much more reliable method of trading rather than day trading. Good luck!

People spend years learning how to trade & you want a short quick answer……… sorry…. there is no such thing.

If there was a "best time" to trade… wouldn't all the professionals be doing it. I do have some rules for myself;
I never buy/sell before 10:00PM EDT
If a stock reaches its high 5 minutes before 4:00PM, I'll buy.
I never trade during the hours of 11:30AM-1:30PM (lunch)

BUT…. these rules mean nothing without a ton of information I or anyone here can give you.

Here's some places to start;
http://www.alphatrends.net/ (best "sum up" of daily activity on the web).
http://www.tradingwithtk.com/ (good teacher, dangerous stocks).
http://streamer.thinkorswim.com:8000/shadowtrader.m3u
(great market comentary during the day, 9:15AM - 4:00PM EDT).

ya@eriestocktrader.com

You want to buy a diversified portfolio of stocks, as individual stocks are too risky. With a few thousand dollars, this means buying mutual funds. I like Vanguard.com, other people like Fidelity, TIAA-CREF, and DFA. Buy no-load, low cost funds. If you are like most people you will invest part of your money conservatively, in money market funds and bond funds, and part aggressively in stock funds. Vanguard.com has an on-line questionnaire which will give you an idea how aggressive you want to be.

Investing in a mutual fund IRA for retirement may give you an income tax break. Talk to your tax adviser. You may also be able to invest in a stock mutual fund via a 401K plan at work.

Believing advice you get on Yahoo answers can be risky, so read these websites for further information. If you find it too confusing, contact a professional financial advisor. They will charge you significant commissions, however.

There are very few, if any sites that will provide you with average annual price. However, Yahoo finance has the information you need to calculate that price. Go to Yahoo finance and enter the symbol for the stock in question. When the data for that stock displays on the screen, on the left hand side of the page near the top you will find "historical prices". Click on that. Enter the start date and the end date i e 1/1/2005 and 12/31/2005 and press enter. That will bring up the daily stock prices for the stock in question. Next down load them to a spread sheet. At the bottom of the page you will see "Download to spreadsheet". Click on that. Once you have the prices in the spread sheet, you can calculate the average price for the year. Sum the closing prices x the volume figure for each day and put that figure in a new column. Then sum the that column down the page and sum the volumn figure down the page. Then divide the sum of price x volume by sum of volumns. That will give you the average price for the year or rather close enough. Also Yahoo finance has the has the current market value, and book value and current price. You can get the year end figures by going to the SEC filings. On the left side of the page again but further down, and when you get there displaying the 10k for the company. It will have the book value. Divide the tangible assets by the number of shares outstanding. The market value is the price of the stock x the number of shares outstanding.

Only the number of shares and price per trade– and even then you would have to have a fairly high level service. An investor does not have the right to another investor's trading data or to infringe their confidentiality or privacy. This information is not generally known unless the particular buyer or seller is an insider (an officer, director, or large proportionate shareholder). Ownership amounts of over 5% must be reported. Insider trading data can be found on Edgar online or Yahoo Finance (just enter a symbol and look under insider).

First, if you are a long term investor, you were willing to pay 1.20 according to your limit and you got filled at 1.16 so it's a good fill according to your instructions. Long term, 4 cents isn't going to make much difference.

Second, if you consider yourself a "trader" a lot of weird things happen in the pushing and shoving of the open. The specialists on the floor make a huge amount of money at this time. In this case, it wouldn't surprise me if the specialist/market maker first did a bunch of buying of opening orders (ONT opened at 1.07) and then sold to the opening buy orders at 1.16 (ONT jumped to 1.16 right after the opening) thus making 0.09 per share just for being the specialist/market maker. He has no obligation to match the orders of public buyers with public sellers. It's good to be the market maker. Traders like me always wait to see how the stock opens to get confirmation before placing an order. A lot of things can happen in the news between 1AM and the market open. Traders never put in orders and let them sit that long.