Learning trading

[bladefd]

I wanted to start power trading in the stock market. I'm not talking long-term investing but short-term buy/sell smaller stocks for profit. I have no degree in banking or financing. Any suggestions on where to start?

[Kvnzhangyay]

Several things

1) Banking has almost no relation witht he market; most of the time it's just coverage/advisory

2) Trading at most banks nowadays aren't what you imagine either, most of what they do is just maintaining market liquidity

What you are thinking of is prop trading, which, I'm going to say right now, is INSANELY hard.

I think, first of all, you should decide what type of trading you want to:
a) Actual prop trading, aka day-trading based off of momentum swings. This generally involves a highly volatile stock and buying low-selling high continuously
b)Short term value investing, such as buying a company over a short-term horizon hoping for gains

If you want to go for (a), sorry, I have zero experience in it, no idea how

If you want to go for (b), worry less about fundamentals and focus more on news/technical analysis (RSI is a good basic starting point). News is also a huge thing, such as EPS beats/misses.

To be honest, I do not think trading is worth it, as you will have to spend a LOT of time or be VERY lucky to beat the market. In all honesty, my advice for trading nowadays personally is to not focus on "trading stocks", but finding what asset class/geographic asset class is best. For example, maybe you think emerging markets or short-term bonds will do well, so you invest in ETFs for those in the short-term.

For fun, if you really want to go balls to the wall (which I would HIGHLY recommend not to...), you can leverage that shit

[sd3035]

You might want to look into forex trading too

[Hawker]

Very un-Bernie Sanders of you.

[pethuel03]

For short term trading, you only need to know one thing -> TECHNICAL ANALYSIS (Reading Charts).

Might want to start watching instructional youtube videos now

Been trading for almost 2 years now.

[Bourne]

I audit mutual funds and hedge funds, plenty with day trading.

If professionals with experience and wisdom can't make high enough returns to justify the time spent, neither can you.

Luck is what determines significant success when trading.

[plowking]

I'd suggest googling the amount of people who actually make profits with day trading, and then come back and figure out if you still want to do it.

The best advice I can give you, if you really do want to do it and get the technical aspects down, is pick 2 or 3 stocks, get familiar with them, and you'll be far more successful.
I made about 2-3 grand doing this with a particular stock for 3 or so months and simply following patterns. I was up a little more but eventually it broke the pattern, broke its floor, I lost a little, and I wasn't intent on waiting around and doing it all over again.

Aside from that one time, I don't do it. You'd have better luck researching spec stocks and figuring out which ones have the highest chance to get big. And even that is risky.

[step_back]

You might want to look into forex trading too

This,

To be honest stocks aren't worth trading unless you have around $40-50 grand to invest. Forex although a lot more volatile can have a small sum of a few hundred dollars to get you started. For the record you'll lose all of it in your first few weeks. It happens to everyone so my best advice is to start as small as possible.

I recommend that you pick up a copy of Forex for ambitious beginners, it won't turn you into Warren Buffett but it will provide a huge amount of insight. You'll also learn some interesting things like the incoming decline of the American dollar in the next 10-20 years or so as the petrodollar will no longer dominate the oil market and how China is pissing off every nation by artificially devaluing their currency to undermine other countries export industry.

[GimmeThat]

forensic accounting would be something of an area I would think about. maybe look for a book published by some professor who has had years of teaching/wisdom that isn't a textbook, but as a guide to think how.

If the book tells you, that it takes years at times for certain companies to adjust their book, under the requirements by law now you really get to think about whether or not you want to get into trading.

as to high volume short term trading: really, what angles aren't worth fighting for/against the market. good luck surfing!!

[KyrieTheFuture]

So with zero trading experience you want to jump into arguably the hardest area of trading. Have fun losing money.

[9erempiree]

I audit mutual funds and hedge funds, plenty with day trading.

If professionals with experience and wisdom can't make high enough returns to justify the time spent, neither can you.

Luck is what determines significant success when trading.

Everyone should be making a profit by trading.

The only reason why people don't make money because seeing thousands of dollars decline scares them and they pull out before even letting their money earn them a profit.

Day trading is very easy actually.

I study mostly FOREX and I assume its the same with stocks. Just like FOREX stocks float at a certain range and in a day's span their prices fluctuate up and down within those ranges. I would just trade accordingly to those ranges.

If done right...NOBODY should be losing money.

Analyzing FOREX gets you ready for stocks.

[Kvnzhangyay]

Everyone should be making a profit by trading.

The only reason why people don't make money because seeing thousands of dollars decline scares them and they pull out before even letting their money earn them a profit.

Day trading is very easy actually.

I study mostly FOREX and I assume its the same with stocks. Just like FOREX stocks float at a certain range and in a day's span their prices fluctuate up and down within those ranges. I would just trade accordingly to those ranges.

If done right...NOBODY should be losing money.

Analyzing FOREX gets you ready for stocks.


FOREX is so volatile though, due to most of it being leveraged.. I wouldn't start off with it. The ranges aren't that predictable either

Day trading is also not that easy- it takes a shitload of your time.. That's some bigass opportunity cost. It's not hard to beat the market, but I don't think it's worth the time and effort

I know people that work in mostly in high yield offering,/ advisory for companies (aka sell side) and all of these guys just invest passively.. Why? Because it takes too much time.. I focus on distressed debt and I wouldn't day trade either

Props to you though if you do well- you're probably way better than me at prop trading - I suck with TA :(

[9erempiree]

It takes time and it's considered a job.

The great thing about trading platforms is the ability to set a certain range/price that you can buy. Set a price/range/pips and it will automatically sell for you.