
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.



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.

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!

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
How do I find a cheap, easy to use broker? There are SO MANY - how do I chose? The ones I've heard about include Ameritrade, eTrade, Sharebuilder, TDWaterhouse, ScotTrade, Fidelity, the list goes on! What makes them all different?
What I know: I'd like do invest relatively conservatively (IE - no day-trading). I'd like to invest in ethanol. I'd like to invest for down the line…
The only resource I'm using now are
http://www.investingonline.org/index.html
Yahoo! Finance.
HELP!
Update:
I'm probably looking to invest a few thousand for now. That may increase but I dont foresee investing more than 5-10K.
As far as where I was planning to put my money - mostly in stocks in NYSE or Nasdaq. Prob not smallcaps/penny stocks, but I did have my eye on an IPO or two. BTW what are franchise stocks?
I was actually thinking about Sharebuilder - it comes highly acclaimed. Why is touted so much? Advantages / Disadvantages?

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.
Are there any good sites or books that have that and industry averages for certain whole years?


It was 10/18 - before 1:00am - when I placed an online order to buy ONT with limit $1.20 each. I got it for $1.16 - the highest ONT trading rate for the day - even at 10:30 am east - when I called my broker to ask why I got the shares at the highest rate:
1) Broker said AMEX trading hours for ONT have not really started at 9:30am.
2) The charts on broker site show the AMEX opening hours: 9:30 am/ Opening price for about 4 minutes: $1.07/share and it did not jump right away to $1.16.
3) I did not order to buy the shares before the AMEX opening hours. But my broker said it is how AMEX deals with the orders.
4) Broker also said that if I had placed an order to sell, it would
get processed immediately. Since I placed the order to buy, it didn't get thru so fast.
Is here any trading sense from his say or he forgot to add key words?

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.



