Day Trading

I'm giving you some web sites to check out for day traders and swing traders. This will give you a "feel".
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.

The most important thing to look at is risk versus reward. It takes a lot of skill to be successful at day trading, and a lot of cash. According to SEC regulations, you must maintain an account balance (minimum equity level) of at least $25,000. However, you will only be classified as a day trader if you buy and sell (or sell short and buy to cover) the same security within one day, and do this four or more times over five days or less. This means that you can make a day trade (or two or three) and not have to worry about your account being frozen, but make a habit of it and you will see your account suspended for up to 90 days.
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!

You want to buy a diversified portfolio of stocks, as individual stocks are too risky. With a few thousand dollars, this means buying mutual funds. I like Vanguard.com, other people like Fidelity, TIAA-CREF, and DFA. Buy no-load, low cost funds. If you are like most people you will invest part of your money conservatively, in money market funds and bond funds, and part aggressively in stock funds. Vanguard.com has an on-line questionnaire which will give you an idea how aggressive you want to be.

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.

Day-trading is not easy for a novice or part-time investor and in order to be done successfully you will need to put a lot of time into research and analysis of various market trends. Also, any good broker will advise you against trying to become a day-trader because of the potential losses and risks. I would personally leave day-trading to the professionals with a lot of capital and time. However, if you want to start investing successfully try to set the goals for the security that you choose as well as an appropriate exit strategy before you even make your purchase. Make sure that the goals you set include the amount of commission that you will pay to buy and sell the security. Also, and this is extremely important make sure that you purchase and sell with limit orders not market orders.

Here's something many traders don't know:
To "day trade" or "scalp": A trader MUST have - AT ALL TIMES - AT LEAST $25,000 U.S. CASH in his/her/their trading account.

This does not include any stocks or trades the trad err might be in. This is cold, hard U.S. CASH.

As soon as the account goes one cent below $25K, a whole different set of rules comes into play.

Check with your broker or any broker to confirm what I write. There MAY BE exceptions.

As far as penny shares:
They are far, far, far too risky and volatile.

Thanks for asking your Q! I enjoyed doing my best to answer it.

VTY,
Ron Berue
Yes, that is my real last name!

I would not recommend you to jump into day trading. It’s not for beginners, and you could potentially lose a ton of money in a matter of minutes. In addition, day trading would require a lot of money, and trading with $1,000 would definitely not be enough to cover for the commission costs.

You will need a broker to make stock trades for you but different types of brokers will charge different amounts. Full-service brokers will provide you with a lot of advice. However, their commission rates are much higher than the ones from discount brokers, who only make the transaction of the trade. Personally, I prefer discount brokers because they are cheaper and they allow me to make my own decisions.

I currently use Firstrade ( http://www.firstrade.com/ ). I prefer them over Scottrade because they offer free dividend reinvestment (DRIPs), which is essential for long term investments. They also have slightly cheaper commission rates and much lower commission rates when compparing to ther big name brokers such as Etrade, Ameritrade, and Schwab. Their customer service and website are great as well. I would definitely recommend that you check them out.

If you aren’t comfortable with your invest skills, instead of getting a full-service broker, I would suggest that you try mutual funds. Mutual funds are diversified, thereby less risky. They are also professionally managed so you don’t have to worry about what to buy or sell. To learn more about mutual funds, you could visit Investopedia ( http://www.investopedia.com/ ).

No.

$3000 is too high a cost to pay to learn what's all free and available all over the net.

Go and download the "OPTIONS TOOLBOX" and play with it. Everything you need to know is there.

You can get this from http://www.cboe.com/LearnCenter/RCTools.aspx

Explore CBOE - Chicago Board Options Exchange, for wealth of free information on options. There you have links to other sites too - Options institute etc.

Buy the book - Options as a Strategic Investment by Lawrence G. McMillan, for lot less than $3000 ( think it's $50 at Amazon.com )

p.s.
Mr.DowJones assessment that Option trading is riskier cannot be more wrong. On $ for $ basis, with respect to Risk & Reward, stock trading is lot riskier than option trading. Options goal is to minimize risk and maximize reward. No such thing with stock trading

Nobody expects you to hold a position for weeks/months. they just need you to wait until you have settled funds (3 days).

the restriction is to make sure that small investors (i.e. people who don’t even have 25k) don’t lose their shirts, and cheat the IRS out of tax revenue, because you are totally inept and will have carry-forward losses for the next decade.

this, of course, gets re-packaged as concern for small investors who need protection from themselves. but don’t let that fool you - it’s all about the tax revenue. nobody really cares enough about you to bother protecting you.

Go on Suzie Orman.com
Or watch her show on MSNBC Saturday's 9pm eastern..
I know this sounds silly but watching this show has saved my credit and get out of debt

Picking a trend in just one day is almost impossible. You don't want to hear this, but starting out daytrading like this, you are like a little league football player lining up against the pros.

When you spread your time frame out a bit, you even the odds a little more and give yourself a better chance. It's still not easy, but why start off against impossible odds?

Here's some ideas that might help you manage risk a little better and actually have a chance: http://www.srsfinance.com/Smart_Money_Principle.html

Sorry if I'm raining on your parade. I don't mean to. GRMN, BTW, looks great. Just make sure you keep a stop loss under $95 and trail that up higher as the price moves higher. Nothing worse than letting a winner turn into a loser.

Best of luck