Puts are exchange traded options; they are definately public as long as you are trading them. As a buyer of a put option, it gives you the right to sell your stock at a pre-determined price, called the exercise price.

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.

This site will have all the information you need…

Woow, that is a bad business practice.

Based on my information the did the same thing to several other traders and they all had to go to court to get their money.

it is so funny because on their Ads they are claiming that they are very honest.

Ha Ha ,

Now we know what is the meaning of honestly

Most people loose money bacause they do not have a strategy and money management rules in place

if u dont have disipline dont even start u will loose all your money

many people do trade and have become very very rich so it can be done

Am in India. I do undertake day trading on NSE as well as BSE. Am also a dealer who looks after several clients on day to day basis.

I will answer ur querry in different way :

I am okay if I could get 10 to 12% on yearly basis from day trading. There are several client who regularly lost money in day trading. Looking at current volatility in indian markets, it is very difficult to time the trades.
But I have also seen few people ( particularly with lots of money and those who keep strict stop losses), earning almost 70% a year in day trading.

In case you need more information please email me or ask specific question. Am in Mumbai.

Go read some online articles that compare the main platforms. Just do an online search for "online brokerage comparisons" or something like that. I reccommend Scottrade as the trades are about as cheap as you will get. The downside is their margin rates are above average and I've seen mixed reports on their speed of filling trades. Still for me, they are perfect (but maybe not for you).

Etrade is supposed to allow you to trade on 4 or 5 stock marktes around the world – a huge advantage for a really smart investor or one that wants to focus on international stocks, but useless to most smaller investors (or most that want to focus on mutual funds – like you, maybe).

There are some other good ones. You'll find that OptionExpress is very good (never used this one myself, but they are well rated). More expensive that scottrade but margin rates are lower and maybe they are faster at filling trades.

Anyhow, thats my take on 3 of them but there are many more out there. Of course only used ones that are sipc insured, and again – I'd advise searching for more specifics on this via an online search. FYI, I think kiplingers had an areticle about this about 1-2 years ago. good article but alot can change in 2 years (and I'm not positive it was Kiplingers)

Best luck.

I am a stock trader too: American markets and american stocks are very transparent, so it will be easy to find all kind of information that you need online.
finance.yahoo.com is the website that i use the most during the day, i am a daytrader also.
If you need more advice just feel free to contact me.
I hope that you will chose my answer as the best one.
Thanks

Day traders can buy and sell the same time every hour it they have a desire to do so. Brokers love this as they make lots of dollars in commissions. It's a tough bussiness.

Regarding taxes, in the US, if you make $60000 daytrading, you will pay short term capital gains. On the other hand, if you lose a net of $60000, you can only write off $3000 per year, until the $60000 is written off (about 20 years).
swh

Penny stocks, or pink sheet stocks, are so thinly traded, that they are not tracked by schwab, thestreet.com, bloomberg, etc. so you can't get the information as readily as you can larger, more established companies. You can call Schwab and ask your broker for an update. You can also go on the company website and see if there is any investor information. Before you buy a stock, you should look at the financials of the company. If you do not have that information, ask the company for it. Tell them you are an investor, and you want the company financials, quarterlies, updates,etc.-to be added to their mailing list. On some company websites, you can actually sign up to receive investor information by email. If it is a very new, small company, that may not be available to you via email. Good luck! Hope you have a winner. Those penny stocks are very difficult– it's not like buying Google- where you can find everything at your fingertips!

Here you go.

http://www.earnings.com/earning.asp?month=20070215&day=20061116&date=20070216&client=cb