I heard there are groups of people that get together to share information, buy & sell stock, etc. etc. Any idea where I can join a group in Los Angeles, CA.?
Some good places online to share info with others and learn are;
investorshub.com (my favorite)
siliconinvestor.com
ragingbull.com
many boards are devoted to trading at the above sites. you can sign up for free memberships at all 3. Ask the traders on the trading boards what software they use.
I have been a trader, investor, broker, etc. and it is rare to see anyone who is not a professional trade for a living. If you got it, then you will know pretty soon. You have to be able to set your stops, take your losses if needed.
Also read "trading for a living" "come into my trading room" both great books from Alexander Elder.
To trade and/or invest you need four major programs in place before you do anything.
1 A written sound trading/investment plan with rules that will not only help you but more importantly protect you, mostly from yourself.
2 – Sufficient trading/investment capital. Use your own money, there’s no need to go into debt so that you trade/invest.
3 – A written money management program in place. Remember never invest 100% of your capital into any one security and never have 100% of your capital invested.
4 – A full and complete understanding of the rules & regulations of the industry.
Judging by the wording of your question you’re no where near being ready to do anything in the market. I’m not saying this as a put down but rather as a warning before you hurt yourself financially.
For more clarification, there are about 252 trading days in a year. On average, looking at the history of the stock market, what percentage of these days are "up" days for the market.
Say you want data on the Dow. Go to http://finance.yahoo.com, click on Dow, then click on Historical Prices. Set the date range and click Get Prices.
Highlight the resulting table, Ctl-C to Copy, and then Ctl-V to paste into a spreadsheet program such as MS Excel. It may take several pages to get all of the data.
Simplest way: In the spreadsheet program, create another column, call it Change, next to the last column of numbers (Adjusted Close). Calculate this column as the value directly to the left, minus the value above and to the left. Count the minus signs (down days) and the zeros. Subtract from the number of rows and you'll get the pluses.
A more elegant way, if you are intimate with how to do formulas in your program, is to do an IF statement that does the following: IF the Adjusted Close is greater than the previous Adjusted Close, then enter 1; otherwise, enter 0. At the bottom of this column, have it calculate the sum. That will be the number of UP days.
Best of success.
Step-by-Step Stock Investing for Beginners
http://www.stock-investment-made-easy.com/
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=As61UR4DWXZnVDIVK6se6XLty6IX?qid=20070717183111AAk8IIS&show=7#profile-info-kFApW5uJaa
Also, why is this index so important as compared to others?
Any mutual fund or ETF that is based on that particular index will need to make trades in order to make sure that it doesn't drift too far from the index. That's why there is so much trading around rebalancing days.
As for why the Russell indexes are important – the DOW (30 stocks) and the S&P (500 stocks) are an indication of how the large capitalization stocks in the US are doing. The Russell indexes give one a better idea about mid caps and small caps as well. If one wants exposure to smaller companies then these indexes are better suited than the more narrower large cap indexes mentioned above.
If you can't get there directly try going to slotmarket.blogspot.com and click on the link to Green that's there.
P.S. If you are going to be a day trader, also listen to the interview with " muddy"…take notes.
I tried the 15 day free trial and was making over 30% annual interest on my money. They showed how I could make more but also had to take bigger risk trading. I was able to swing some trades for positive return of 10% in 15 days trading conservatively with a demo account. I have only been in the forex market for a short time but found it very intriguing.
Thanks for your responses in advance.
