Thread: who trades stocks?

Figure out what style of investing you want to do. Create a trading system that matches your style. Then try it out on a virtual stock exchange.

Traded since I was 18...I have ALWAYS used a broker.

Never paid for advice, but I trust them running my transactions. I don't trust the net for large transactions.

BOT120.80CAT70.52CME465.00DE72.59ESL41.87LLL76.24LMT76.78MTSX2.14TDY33.51XOM65.36

Thanx to Bush, war in the middle east, and high gas prices the past 3 years have been running quite well for the above....always look for a silver lining.

MTSX is my sleeper

My Dad day trades for a living.

I use to trade alot when I was younger but I can't keep up with the market like I use to so I threw the cash in my IRA like I should have and have it wrapped up in lifecycle mutual funds

good question....I need to make some money lol
I am unemployed at the moment in shit town Iowa where jobs are few and far between, anyone have an online business and need help?

Originally Posted by bigss75

I use to trade alot when I was younger but I can't keep up with the market like I use to so I threw the cash in my IRA like I should have and have it wrapped up in lifecycle mutual funds

how old are you?


R U retired? If not why not RothIRA instead?

Its a Roth. I started trading stocks at 15. I got out of trading before I went to college and all the salary I made mostly goes to my IRA. Hopefully if everything plays over right and I get into dental school, I'll probably have to convert it to a Traditional IRA

Buy The Index!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I wanna make some money too.

Originally Posted by BigDyl

I wanna make some money too.

How would you like to make $2 the hard way?

Originally Posted by ForemanRules

How would you like to make $2 the hard way?

Emphasis on the word hard.

scottrade is best, ebay is the best buy right now.

Scottrade is not the best, they dont have the lowest commissions and if you ever buy OTC/Pinks you really get hammered with 1/2% commissions per share under $1 stocks. Now if you trade big cap stocks only, and hold longer term, then you still get free realtime streaming quotes - then I'd vote for them being a great choice.

Rookies shouldn't touch penny stocks anyway, they will eat you alive.

First, find what you are going to invest in.

If you are intelligent and not already tracking things like a hawk, which most people don't, virtual trade for 12 months before you put any money into anything. More people lose money than make money. Market makers are trained experts at scaring people out of their money.

Originally Posted by MyK

Buy The Index!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Agreed.

I max out my ROTH IRA every year and have rolled over my 401ks, but a great non-tax-deffered and/or non-tax-exempt fund is the

Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund. The fees are miniscule. Taxes are negligible because it doesn't buy and sell much.

It can be a non-IRA/401 retirement fund for those that want it to be.

Originally Posted by Mudge

Scottrade is not the best, they dont have the lowest commissions and if you ever buy OTC/Pinks you really get hammered with 1/2% commissions per share under $1 stocks. Now if you trade big cap stocks only, and hold longer term, then you still get free realtime streaming quotes - then I'd vote for them being a great choice.

Rookies shouldn't touch penny stocks anyway, they will eat you alive.

First, find what you are going to invest in.

If you are intelligent and not already tracking things like a hawk, which most people don't, virtual trade for 12 months before you put any money into anything. More people lose money than make money. Market makers are trained experts at scaring people out of their money.

Man, I could be in the game for decades and not buy penny stocks, their almost as volatile as the futures market. What brokerage do you use?

Originally Posted by Mudge

Scottrade is not the best, they dont have the lowest commissions and if you ever buy OTC/Pinks you really get hammered with 1/2% commissions per share under $1 stocks. Now if you trade big cap stocks only, and hold longer term, then you still get free realtime streaming quotes - then I'd vote for them being a great choice.

Rookies shouldn't touch penny stocks anyway, they will eat you alive.

First, find what you are going to invest in.

If you are intelligent and not already tracking things like a hawk, which most people don't, virtual trade for 12 months before you put any money into anything. More people lose money than make money. Market makers are trained experts at scaring people out of their money.

where can you virtual trade for free at?

Originally Posted by managemysite

scottrade is best, ebay is the best buy right now.

I wouldn't touch ebay

Before you do any trading, and before you give your money to a bunch of crooked bastards ( most stock traders ) do about a year's worth of research.

Originally Posted by bigss75

Man, I could be in the game for decades and not buy penny stocks, their almost as volatile as the futures market. What brokerage do you use?

Choicetrade.com and Scottrade.com , lowtrades.com also may have something to offer you.

Search Google for virtual stock trading, or stock trading game. There are several. Some sites also offer you $100,000 as an example (virtual money) to invest. These are competitions, of which of course there are rules you have to abide by, but you can view what other peoples trades are, and what their strategy is. I think wallst.net is the most recent place to do this.

http://simulator.investopedia.com/

There is one you can try.

Be wary of trading message boards, basically, do as much of your own research as possible before throwing your money into something unless you really feel you know what you are doing (which is 90% of the people who lose 90% of their money).

6-18 month holds are what I would suggest, of course, you have to know when to get in. Most people buy when confidence is high, and then dump the stock when people lose that confidence, thereby shaving their holdings down little by little.

Natural Gas is worth almost nothing right now, so nobody wants it. Smart people buy it now, and unload as its price starts to climb in the winter.

We simply attempt to be fearful when others are
greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.
Warren Buffett

Warren also suggests that you buy only stocks that you can sleep at night owning, if the stock market were to go down for 5 years. Everyone has different strategies. I also like Nicholas Darvas type stocks, if you can find them. There are some filtering systems out there, like microcaptrade.com but that costs moolah.

Read read read, before you do anything.

Good luck, the odds are against all of us.

Amazingly, despite GOOG stock price, they are considered heavily undervalued.

By comparison, Underarmour clothing is trading 15x higher than GOOG versus what these two companies actually rake in. Heavily OVERVALUED, and just dying to retrace.

I would buy GOOG anywhere under $400, it may slide to $380 as it has a couple times. If you want short term, unload at $418 or so. I love pennies though, I am in RSHN long term. XKEM was a recent 10 bagger for me, bought a touch over a penny and sold at 11 cents.

However pennies once again are very high risk, I threw away over 10 grand in just a couple weeks playing pennies. It takes awhile to get the hang of things, and most people get burned not rich. Market makers get rich off your mistakes. Just when you think things are going to get good, thats when your 'favorite company' decides to dilute the stock, or do a huge R/S with intent to dilute more very shortly. Usually this is after they promise not too.

Lots of experienced folks will tell you that owning a pink or OTC is just like owning a turd. You just hope that it gets a little polish on it someday so that you can unload it elsewhere, but the timing is difficult.

Just do your research, lots of it. Dont trade with emotion, you will be owned.

You got a pretty bleak outlook on the stock market dont ya

I will share a short story with you, that is also pretty recent.

STTK, one of several bird flu stocks. Doing very well over a period of a few weeks, going up around 10x value and still climbing. Just about to have an investors teleconference, everyone is excited.

Stocklemon.com posts a completely unfounded, bullshit story about how the company is just a big scam. Posts several lies about the CEO and a couple other high ranking people inside the company. Stocklemon.com removes the story in a matter of minutes, but the stock goes from over $1.80 (I bought it at $1.79) down to around 50 cents in about 20 minutes.

Nobody wants to buy a flaming bag of shit, so it gets tough to get out of a stock. It took me about 10 minutes to find a buyer, so my $1.79 or so went down to just over a dollar. So, I lost almost half of my investment in about 10 or 15 minutes, because of a completely factless posting on a stupid website.

Fear and false excitement run the pennies, and even something completely untrue will scare people. And due to volatility you can lose almost everything in minutes, and its not easy to get out when nobody wants to buy your flaming bag of shit stock.

Originally Posted by bigss75

You got a pretty bleak outlook on the stock market dont ya

Me? I love it, but I've been doing it since the 90s. First timers are in for some pain if they dont study up, and have thousands to lose first.

So I'd rather scare the uncertain, than encourage the foolish. If a man or woman feels they are ready, they will know for themselves.

Then they will find out if they were right or not.

I like Jim Cramer, check him out. You can get his Podcasts for free on iTunes if you can't watch him.

Originally Posted by ForemanRules

How would you like to make $2 the hard way?

Originally Posted by Mudge

Me? I love it, but I've been doing it since the 90s. First timers are in for some pain if they dont study up, and have thousands to lose first.

So I'd rather scare the uncertain, than encourage the foolish. If a man or woman feels they are ready, they will know for themselves.

Then they will find out if they were right or not.

I like Jim Cramer, check him out. You can get his Podcasts for free on iTunes if you can't watch him.

I love watching cramer, I would never follow his advise blindly like some people, he makes the market interesting for people who wouldnt really care about the market. His last book is a perfect book for beginners to learn the basics of investing.

They have a website where they take his picks and see how they do against a chickens pick its pretty funny

Just like you said mudge dont take advise from people on message boards, I was in one and this guy was talking about how great nurtisystem stock is and it got destoried today because the president jumped ship