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.

How the hell did you pick 11 AM and 12:30 PM, assuming you mean Eastern time, this is when a lot of traders simply take time off and go eat lunch. Markets are typically less liquid during this time. There are day trading strategies based on time of day, but I've never seen any that involve lunchtime.

Banerjida,

You answered your question yourself, isn't it. Buying a stock is not a lottery ticket, it is part ownership in the business. If the business does well over the long term, so will the stocks performance. I am sure you have lots of examples in front of you -companies like ITC, HDFC, Ranbaxy, Infosys, and many more that have been doing well for decades, so have their stocks, if you held on to them.

Dada, its time you read a real Investing book, Try One up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch, to start with. You will forget about wasting time in evolving trading strategies, and invest the time and effort in picking real good stocks, as Peter Lynch practically shows you how to. (There are better books to start with, but I am guessing you will enjoy the anecdotal style adopted by Peter Lynch more than the slightly more academic but nevertheless excellent reads like The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham)

If you want to build long term wealth, change tack NOW. Or else, if you have enough money to fritter away, keep trying at the 1: 99 odds!

Day Trading, in the final count, is really a combination of skill & luck. In that sense, it's akin to gambling.

Sure, using TA methods like Japanese Candlesticks, and RSI and MACD will help you get a SLIGHTLY better picture, but TA does not allow for the emotional aspect of it – say, when a stock in a particular sector blows up due to mismanagement or fraud, all the other stocks in that sector go down because of "guilt by association".

And, when folks panic for whatever reason, they dump stocks regardless of whether they are good or bad.

If I were to resume Day Trading ( I gave that up some time ago ), I would depend most heavily on the MOMENTUM indicator, and not hold for more than a few hours.

From experience, it is VERY difficult to make money consistently in Day Trading, and I hope you will consider a longer term perspective.

Choose stocks with good fundamentals, good management, a stable market space, then buy some. The probability of being able to exit with a profit increases the longer you hold it.

You should watch Mad Money on MSNBC. Jim Cramer is awesome and he doesn't just suggest stocks but he actually teaches you how the market works and the strategies he uses to make money. Its at 3 pm Pacific Time.

This is just a couple of paragraphs a copied and pasted from the bottomm links ( this is a fairly long article). They helped me a lot when i was researching about short/long term forex strategies and tips. All the rest of the helpful articles are in the 'forex resources' section on http://www.forextradinghq.com

In order to profit from the forex market, you will need strategies and also the will to change these strategies. Traders who lack a well thought out trading plan are prone to panic and confusion, when unexpected swings in the forex market occur. Many traders will tell you that trade driven by emotion is the fastest way to deplete your funds. Whether or not you are using a technical or fundamental style, it is still essential that you have a proper view of the market.

Developing your own trading style is a time consuming process and is often acquired through trail and error. It is unfortunate that there is no ‘golden’ rule’ to trade in the forex market and technical and fundamental styles of trade won’t be successful all the time. Successful traders often have a unique style of trading and take up various strategies during a trading session. Only continuous practice will help you gain a feel for the movements of the forex market.

I would say a mix of strategies might be best. The best thing to do is – do a lot of research. A good place to find interesting investment ideas is http://www.top10traders.com – this is a free site that lets you create a portfolio of stocks with $100,000 in "play" money. Each day the site ranks the best performing portfolios, so you can see how your picks perform compared to other investors. You can read posts on investing from the best traders, as well as share your own investing ideas. There is a charting feature, so you can see how your portfolio performs compared to the S&P 500. Also, you can create your own "group" so that you can see how you are doing compared to your friends.

Here are this month's best traders:

http://www.top10traders.com/Top10Standings.aspx

Good luck.

The link below offers day-trading strategies.

Best of luck, just hope you have an iron stomach, because it is not a game for people with a weak stomach.

They are highly volatile. If you are an experienced trader, you can make a lot of money. If you don't have experience, this is no place to learn about futures trading. Start with grains or something relatively straight-forward and then move to eminis when you feel comfortable.

You should really do what you can to find a hedge fund. There are large well established funds, but there are also small start-up funds.

You would be shocked how much they pay for analysts out of college (6 figures usually!) for NYC offices. There are so many funds these days that the demand is extremely high. That being said, the recent choppiness in the credit markets may have led to a pullback in hedge fund analyst demand.

In order to find these guys, you are just going ot have to do some legwork. Try a company on the web called Glocap.