Day Trading

I found some useful tips in stock trading. It includes stock basics, how to protect your profit, find a potential increase share, control and manage stock risk, when to sell/buy stock and so on.

http://www.bernanke.cn/stock-trade/

Best Wishes && Good Luck!

Look into the Investor platform at TerraNovaOnline.com
I think this one is free if you open an account there. I use the full-blown package called RealTick for $250/mo. The Investor platform is the same software, sized down to one screen. I use five monitors. This is very technologically advanced softwarefrom Townsend Analytics, the one that digitized the entire Nasdaq last year. Cutting edge technology. If you make some money, then definately upgrade to RealTick.

(2) If you exercise the option in the morning and the stock price closes over the strike price when the market closes you will only receive the strike price.

(3) You can avoid the situation in (2) by waiting until the end of the trading session to exercise the option.

(4) If the stock price is close enough to the strike price you will almost always make more money by selling the stock and selling the option instead of exercising the option.

First there are two books you should read. Way better than textbooks. The first is called "the math behind wall street".

http://www.amazon.com/Math-Behind-Wall-Street-Market/dp/1568581602/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-9307096-4545628?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1177570772&sr=8-1

Then read this one;

http://www.amazon.com/Investing-Dummies-Business-Personal-Finance/dp/0764599038/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-9307096-4545628?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1177570661&sr=8-1

If you want to jump into it right away, the University of Arizona has a lot of good materials online. The books are better, but here is the link;

http://www.studyfinance.com/

Read the books. Read the Wall Street Journal every day, highlight the terms you don't understand & look them up online. Google the term "_____ definition".

Finally play the fantasy stock market. It is a cheap way to learn.

Here is that link.

http://www.investopedia.com/

And the guide.

http://simulator.investopedia.com/stock/game/

Buy a Hewlett Packard financial calculator ($40 bucks), & READ THE MANUAL.

If you do this and like it, I'd recommend finance as a major. Although it is pretty intense.

Very cool that you want to learn.

Good luck

The markets trade Monday thru Friday for a total of 260 days, but you must remember that there are 13 holiday's that the markets are closed. Some of the holidays are set like Labor Day and Thanksgiving. Other holidays may fall on the weekend at which time there is no trading.

I hope this gives you a better understanding of the number of trading days.

Pros First:

Work when you want
You are your own boss
Holidays off
If successful, you can make a ton of money
Work wherever you want as long as you have a pc and internet connection
Very low economic barriers to entry
Unlimited growth potential
Your ego will get a stroke when you tell people that you trade for a living
You'll learn more about your inner self than you would joining a convent

I'm sure there's more, but those are the big ones.

Now the Cons:

The educational learning curve is very steep.
You need to have at least $30,000 that you can afford to lose as well as 6-12 months of living expenses.
Inconsistent income with no benefits.
You will lose money for at least 6-12 months, period.
Everyone you know will think you're crazy, especially until you turn a profit which could realistically take years.
All of your personal flaws will be magnified, thrown in your face, and cost you money.
Its a very lonely job with little social interaction.
You may spend years of very hard work & study and still lose everything, can you handle that emotionally?
Just when you think you've got it, the markets will change and you're system will no longer work.
You are competing against the best professionals in the world, why would you have a chance?

There are a lot of really good pros to day trading but you need to be realistic in your expectations. Though you get to set your own hours, if you want to be successful, you must be willing to work at it just like any other job.

When things go well, don't get cocky, when things go bad, don't get down.

The odds are that you will fail, but don't let that discourage you from trying. Get as much education as you can and if possible, hook up with a profitable mentor to show you the ropes. And if you can't stand to loose everything and still be sane at the end, walk away now.

Hope this helps

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.