Day Trading

For instance, if you own stock now selling at $10 each and want to protect your portfolio against losses, you could buy a put option. Say, your stop loss is 10% loss. You would either sell your stocks when they fall below $9 each. However, this would not guarantee a stop loss because every seller would be freaking out and wanting to sell these stock. So, the stock price might even fall to say $7 each, missing your stop loss.

To hedge against the extra loses, you would have bought put options that would give you a right to sell your stocks at $9 each regardless of how low the stock prices would fall.

Another way of benefitting from options would be to write a spread. At the moment, because the market is bearish, writing bearish call spreads would be the best way to make a lot of money. However, because these spreads are credit spreads, no broker would let you write the spread, without you having an amount of cash in your account, should your credit spread go wrong and your written options get exercised.

These strategies of write credit spreads are better left to more experienced investors. If you are fairly new at stockmarket inveting, I would suggest that you put your money in less volatile investment vehicles like fixed income stuff like savings bonds, CDs etc.

There's not really a big problem in beginning to daytrade, but you need to be cautious. I'd advise you read this http://www.nyse.com/pdfs/im01-9Microsoft%20Word%20-%20Document%20in%2001-9.pdf

Then, you may want to continue paper trading, but you can trade for real if you set up strict losses. When I kick up my live account, I will close all my positions immediately if I lose 20%. Then, I will go back through my journals, the charts, and more paper trading until I get it right.

You can get all expenses lists from the individual sites under their fees + comissions and/or pricing tabs. If you are unclear of what they all are, just email the brokerage (I did this with several of tradeking's fees). You will need to get used to emailing and contacting people and services you will use or look into. Half of the battle of trading is finding everything you need — brokerage, information resources, software, data feeds, etc.

I've probably spent about half my time doing those kinds of things.

For most stocks, commodities and other investments, the market is just too big to be manipulated. What looks like a lot of money to you and me — and is a lot of money for an individual — is just noise to the overall market.

That's not to say that they don't ever try. Most notoriously, the Hunt Brothers pushed silver up to about $54 in 1980. They declared bankruptcy and were convicted of conspiring to manipulate the market. By the way, when they started acquiring silver in 1973, they were among the very wealthiest people in the US and world.

Now, when it comes to illiquid penny stocks, you may know that the story is quite different. Then you do have cases of "pump and dump."

That's where somebody buys a small, over the counter stock, then somehow pumps it up. Most commonly used are Internet investment chat rooms and forums, but financial newsletters have been accused of this too. If you can get a few hundred or thousand people to buy the penny stock, the price will go up. Then you dump it.

Or you can do the opposite. Short a stock, then bad mouth it until the price goes down where you want. I forget the catchy phrase for that.

But notice that these scammers are not using their money to artificially raise or lower price of stock, just word of mouth.

I don't believe that using your own money to push up price of a stock or option — by buying more and more — makes mathematical sense. When you run out of money, demand will return to normal, and so will the stock price, leaving you holding a lot of overpriced shares and options.

Remember that in the money options go up (or down) in price dollar for dollar compared to price rise (or fall) of underlying stock.

best, Rick

Now I use Interactive Brokers because I need forex exposure and I trade their Traderworkstation its a bit cumbersome to use due to all the features it has (you can pretty much trade any market instrument)

I have heard good things about Tradestation look at forums on www.elitetrader.com for more info on reviews.

Good Luck and Happy Trading!

I used to do this but I found that I could gauge individual stocks better than an index. I would recommend trading on stocks with extremely high volatility like Google and Bidu if you are into intraday trading.

I've made quite a fair bit of money this way.

They have forums and such. Some of it is worthwhile. You'll have to pick and choose.

One was going to teach me to day trade with charts and statistics and graphs and Ouija boards and a gypsy with a crystal ball.

The other promoted a software that would pick stocks ready to break out.

The problem with the first is you would spend all your time charting and mapping and whatever. Trading happens second by second. You don't have time to chart anything.

The other might be fine for investing. But a trader doesn't need to know a stock is ready to break out. A trader needs to know the instant it is going to happen and no software will tell you that.

I do trade. Most of my trades are in DOW stocks. On any giving day,most have a nice daily spread of about a buck and a half. Sometimes it will be much more.

In trading the DOW, I have a very good indicator of where to be. Now I will not get rich doing what I do. But by trading blue chips I minimize my potential for loss. I can always move a good stock into my true investing account, knowing it really will come back

The market travels up and down more because of emotion and greed than it does true financial data.

With brokerage fees being so low you can trade on a twenty-five cent rise. 500 share up .25 is $125. You can do it several times a day. I traded the same stock Monday three times, put the money in the bank and was on the beach by 9AM…. market opens early in Hawaii

I don't believe anyone can teach you to trade. Your best bet is to try it with play money for a long time before you put up real cash. There are many virtual sites around.

When you do decide to trade, make sure your brokerage firm has level 2 NASDAQ quotes and then learn to use them.

As to forums, I have never had much luck with them. I use Scottrade, with there Total View they have active trader alerts. I had a good look over several days and decided it might be good for them for me to trade their picks but would not do me much good.

Also if you are an active trade you will get marked as a pattern day trade, make sure you keep enough in the account. You also should have another account for investments.

Good Luck and Good Trading