<p>It appears that we have an Amaranth situation right now which may be sustainable.</p>
<p>I would love to invest, and even have some things in mind, but I would be investing my college money and have heard the phrase "don't invest what you can't afford to lose" one too many times.</p>
<p>you're young, you can rebound. its better to invest into stocks when you are younger so you can recover your money if you lose any. also i wouldnt advise anyone in investing unless you have more then 9k, unless its mutual funds which i find useless.</p>
<p>can anybody pm me and tell me how to do it? i mean like, where to even buy them? what sites? how do i sign up? i have no idea. :X</p>
<p>Just send a check to a broker and set up an account. Or get your parents to set up an account for you with online access. I would suggest at least $30K to play with so that you can trade enough shares so that commissions aren't a major issue.</p>
<p>You could try paper trading too. There are websites that allow you to trade positions and keep track of your progress. It isn't real trading as you're not risking anything but it gives you a feel for buying and selling and stock price and volume behavior.</p>
<p>Personally, I don't think it is a good idea for students to invest the money they need for college. If they have excess cash, then buying stocks is fine. Consider the worst case scenario. They lose a little too much money and can't pay tuition bills or afford books, which would pretty much ruin the entire semester. This, of course, is assuming their parents aren't paying their way through college. If that's the case, then they can afford to lose some money in the market.</p>
<p>mm..30k sounds like abit too much. I was thinking something along the lines of 15k</p>
<p>anything more then 12k should be fine. the more money you invest, the greater the reward. </p>
<p>etrade is nice, thats what i used to use. i need to start trading again but i had to sell all my stocks for college.</p>
<p>Will Etrade survive?</p>
<p>well... i dont really know. its really easy to use and they offer many services, too bad they had really poor management.</p>
<p>I have four brokerage accounts and Etrade has the best platform. Their brokerage side is top-notch. The problem is their mortgage side. There's no transparency there so you can't tell whether they are technically insolvent or not. I've had many discussions with their Platinum Team and I said that I'll move my money back when their stock price is over ten bucks.</p>
<p>I know many that have moved out most of their money. One thing about brokerages when moving everything out is that you still need your records for tax purposes.</p>
<p>Stay out of the market!</p>
<p>"His long-term portfolio is based on fundamental and technical analysis. His short-term portfolio is based on technical analysis. He is truly remarkable at buying or selling the bottom or top, riding the trend, and then peeling off the gains or getting stopped out. The interesting thing is that it is so hard to follow his trades as he frequently buys when everyone else is in panic mode and selling when everyone else is euphoric. His approach sounds like turtle trading to me. Or a variant of it."</p>
<p>This isn't turtle trading or any other type of trend following which are buy on strength and sell on weakness.</p>
<p>^ Are you serious? If I had money right now, I would definitely buy. The economy as a whole is so screwed up, that this might be the best time to pick stocks at low prices.</p>
<p>And how do you figure out what a low price is?</p>
<p>I'd probably try out technical analysis. I'd attempt to figure out whether we are at a market bottom (or near) and whether or not I expect a reversal pattern to occur. But I have no experience investing. I'm basically BSing my way lol...but if I did invest, I might try something along those lines.</p>
<p>lol this thread is funny</p>
<p>You can do both. Today was a great day for day-trading. The market was well-behaved in terms of support/resistance, trendlines, and other patterns. The backdrop to the rally today was a hedge-fund blowup with leveraged energy bets and they collapsed which means that they had to liquidate their holdings. So they dumped commodities pushing oil and precious metals down, pushing the dollar up and, of course, the stock market. Earnings of many non-financial stocks have been quite good. And I'm sure that put/call ratios are way up there as are the number of bears that have grown fat and waddling this past summer. Who were blown out of the water the last few days.</p>
<p>It's nice to have a background of fundamental and technical analysis. Technical analysis is much less work but it's good to understand both.</p>
<p>there are zillions of technical indicators and methodologies out there: moving average crossovers, breakout systems, oscillators etc. Some are good at getting you in usually late but unless you have a strong risk management system and the ability to implement it when trading real money which most people can't, you'll get nailed over time. Nobody can consistenly predict the market - the best that can be done is to maximize the probability of a win and minimize a loss - just like professional gambling.</p>
<p>Technical analysis may be less work but only after you have busted your butt to develop a system that works and they don't always work no matter what the system is.</p>