Experienced stock traders know that trading stocks is not the only game in town but stocks are peculiar things that often take close scrutiny before money is thrown at them and as such most stock traders stay in their fields of speciality. Stock trading is a fairly general term that when broken down can get quite complicated. For example, when someone tells me he or she is a ’stock trader’, I think, “Gee, do you work for a big investment bank? a medium-sized investment bank? a small investment bank catering to wealthy clientele? Perhaps you’re just a small individual stock trader who trades for your own account or perhaps two or three other accounts.
Second, I would naturally wonder if you only trade the NYSE Exchanges? or some other individual stock exchange in the USA? or perhaps you specialize in the Toronto Stock Exchange or the Penny Stocks on the Vancouver Stock Exchange. Do you know how to trade stocks around the world - Tokyo Stock Exchange or the Chinese Hang Seng Index or smaller stock exchanges in other countries.
Next, I would like to know what type of trader you are: A Sector specialist, an index specialist, or an individual stock specialist? Mmm, then I might ask if you had a trading system or methodology - I would ask if you used Technical analysis to choose good stocks in certain sectors or if you based your choices on fundamental analyses or if you used both methods and weighted them equally. Stock trading can get even more diversely specialized and if you’ve ever traded stocks before and were beaten back, I suppose you would understand how important and valuable a solid education in stock trading is. Without the education, you’re shooting in the dark hoping to get a hit here and there but at the same time, you are wasting your ammunition - which in this case is your hard-earned dollars. No wonder people call stock trading a crapshoot! It is if you go in without a good fundamental background in the markets you are planning to enter. Of course, this goes for options trading, futures trading, forex trading and so on.
And it will cost. You can get a decent education for perhaps $5-10,000. In my experience, that’s how much it will take to learn the fundamentals of trading and to sift through the tools of the trade til you learn which tools to use in each kind of market - up, down or sideways. It’s much safer than throwing your money at someone and trusting them to invest your money wisely and safely with appropriate knowledge of your tolerance for risk.
Most people don’t have that luxury of time required to learn the fundamental and thus pull out the Wall Street journal or the Investors Business Daily or their latest issue of forbes magazine looking for a talked-up stock to buy. $5 or 10 thousand dollars later, they figure out what most smarter people learned awhile back - get some training before you stick your money onto a craps table.
Here’s a website that may help you get started in the training and knowledge you need to figure out stock trading and the best methodologies for your own specific circumstance. Stock trading is a serious business and though it looks easy and there are so many stories to read about people who got ‘lucky’, don’t count on it happening to you.