<p>does anybody day trade stocks or follow the market? Is anyone interested in creating a portfolio with bonds, stocks, or anything? I would really like to trade but have big trouble getting all the mumbo jumbo. I learned about technical analysis but I don't know how to actually apply it to everyday trading. Anybody else interested?</p>
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<p>I’m also an engr. major.</p>
<p>Yeah, I think investing is a lot of fun. Only thing is–being a student and not really having any money to invest! I want to start working already…</p>
<p>Technical analysis is stuff like “If there is a negative gap in prices and it goes 50% up it’ll do blah blah blah 90% of the time.” Type of stuff right? I guess you just look for those patterns, right?</p>
<p>Ohoho… People have to major in economics to fully understand, but I’ll explain two things college/HS kids can invest in.</p>
<p>CDs
Stands for ‘Certificate of Deposit’. Essentially you give a bank some money to invest (more in stocks). Could be 1k or 10k or 100k. After a certain amount of time (generally from 12 months to 10 years) you get your money back, plus a bonus from the bank for lettin them use it. Its generally 1.2 to 2.5% for short term, up to 8% for long term, but 2.5 of $10000 is $250 after just a year. Lay off the purchase of a new car for a year, and thats an extra $750 in the bank account. Speaking of which, bank accounts also have interest, up to 1.5% annually for whatever you stow. If you haven’t got one, ask your parents for a bank account and ATM. See if you can invest some moolah!</p>
<p>2) Stocks
(You’ll learn more in economics or US History with Gret Depression).
Most companies are publicly traded on the stock market. This means that people can give them money to use, and get stocks, or shares of the company in exchange. As a shareholder, and essentially an owner of part of the company, you want your company to thrive as much as possible. When the company grows big, you can sell your part to someone else and walk away with the cash. If you wait until a company starts to die, like Blockbuster, the value of what you own drops, and people panic and sell everything in that company. Stocks can be bought as little as .27 a share, such as Amazon and Costco when they started out. Now they’re worth over $25 a share. If you bought $5000 in shares… Whoa! Thats a +100% increase!
But its an investment and its a gamble. Had you invested in Hummer, your stocks would have just plummeted. My friend (in HS still) saw Apple and the iPod as interesting around 5 years ago. Stocks were $250 each! He bought only 10 shares- $2500. With the iPhone, and five years later, he sold them at $375 a share- a profit of $1250! Your parents might own stocks, or have some given by their employer. Many people keep them for decades, selling chunks for new homes, college expenses, or retirement. If you’re interested, Etrade is a website where you can trade stocks online, but they take a little if what you win (or lose). Perhaps $100 is a good investment start?</p>
<p>There are many many other ways, but these are two I know HS kids can do. Hope that sparked some interest!</p>
<p>Thanks lol but I know how to calculate all that stuff that you mentioned. That goes along with the commission fee per trade. My problem is actually applying the concepts of technical analysis to a stock chart. I have paper traded (trading with fake money) and won some money but I’m pretty sure those were just flukes because I had no idea what I was doing. If anybody is experienced with trading stocks/day trading/ investments with technical or fundamental analysis I’d appreciate the help. :)</p>
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<p>I follow the market, and trade. Best way to learn is to just start trading. Start with $500 bucks and trade in micro to small & midcap companies. Stay away from pennystocks.</p>
<p>Or even better, google “Stock Market Games” there are a few sights out there that will give you fake money, and creates a virtual brokerage account. The sites are going to follow the real market quotes, open and close at the same time as well. Just something to look into until your comfortable with the market.</p>
<p>Best of luck.</p>
<p>I have done stock trading for about the last year. Started with $1000 that I saved up from my jobs, and got up to about $1400 a week ago…Safe to say I’m back under a grand from the recent freefall. 
Damn GOP.</p>
<p>From exp. technical analysis is total ********. Every indicator (or most popular) are lagging indicators which means they tell you what the stock did. Then you’re supposed to look at that voodoo graph and predict where a stock is going.</p>
<p>Let me tell you…it doesn’t happen. I’ve found so many real life exceptions to every technical analysis rule you can come up with. Even “textbook charts” I’ve seen go down when everything says they should go up. Our eyes just love to apply hindsight to stuff…which is what technical analysis teaching books exploit.</p>
<p>Unless you can invest some serious time in analysis then I would just dump your money in a mutual fund or CD. I’m planning on getting back into the market after I graduate next year and have more time and money to play with.</p>
<p>I’d also suggest you spend a lot of time paper trading (trading in simulation) just so you can start getting a feel for how stocks behave…they’re all more similar than different. Marketwatch has the best/biggest trading game around.</p>
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<p>I know a dude who worked for an investment bank for a while and from what he could tell, the guys there didn’t really know what they were doing either. I think that is just how the business works . . .</p>
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<p>Damn politicians regardless of parties.</p>
<p>hah @UAkid </p>
<p>hah yeah I’ve read that some indicators are late with the trends but I haven’t gone in depth with the others. I guess I’ve only scratched the surface with technical analysis but I guess the main concept of it was to follow the trends and indicators on the graph. The graph and the history of it is all that’s needed with technical analysis. Can you please give me an example about TA? I’ve actually saved a good amount of my past jobs and want to start trading already but I’m scared to take the plunge because I lack in knowledge. I read on a forum about trading that I should take it as an education fee when I lose money cause it’s bound to happen and don’t let it get you down. hah.
Also I’m already registered with marketwatch and have traded blindly. What I did was I looked at yahoo finance or marketwatch and read about trending companies . I would buy shares based on my poor judgement and I actually made a profit somehow. I didn’t apply any TA either.
I rather start now than later after I graduate just so I know what’s up.
I’ve also used thinkorswim but I’m not used to it yet or not familiar with it. Any advice or can anybody point me towards the right direction? hah it would be greatly appreciated :)</p>
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<p>(this post might ramble a bit)</p>
<p>I know my school library has a whole section of books in the dedicated to trading/investment strategies. I’d suggest perusing them. Technical Analysis A to Z is an encyclopedia of indicators and whatnot that sorta convinced me they don’t work, by accident. There’s probably a couple hundred indicators total. The three most popular indicators for TA are MACD, Stochastics, and RSI. Yahoo Finance I think supports all of them. I get my charts from StockCharts.com because they have everything and also allow you to tweak the parameters of the indicators. The also have a pretty good “school” [StockCharts.com</a> - ChartSchool](<a href=“http://stockcharts.com/school/doku.php?id=chart_school]StockCharts.com”>ChartSchool | Technical Analysis Education | StockCharts.com) . And they’re free.</p>
<p>Remember though books will cherry pick the “examples” they show you. You have to remember that when you need to make decisions you don’t already know the future. Everything is possible in stocks.</p>
<p>In terms of “a good amount of money saved”. Unless you have at least 2k to lose, you’re poor. Commissions alone on the cheap are $14 to buy and sell which means you’d have to make over 1% on $1000 to actually be profitable.</p>
<p>Re: education. Anything you want to try out do virtually. It’s an expensive game to play in real life (I lost $700). Yeah I learned something, but I’m also out $700. That was 5 years a go BTW.</p>
<p>I personally don’t like listening to “experts” or trying to follow trending stocks. It’s an OK place to start investing, but usually that cow has been milked dry by the time the peasants know about it (ie us). I’m also against stocks > $20 / share. Not enough profit potential for me but they’re relatively “safe” as a tradeoff.</p>
<p>I could probably talk for a few hundred pages more about the TA vs Fundamentals schools of thought. If you’re old school or an average dumb investor you should find companies that perform solidly over time etc etc.</p>
<p>Erm…what else…TA doesn’t technically (no pun) have to refer to technical indicators like MACD and whatnot. It really just means analysis independent of knowing/caring what a company actually does or how well they do it.</p>
<p>Really if you want to go with the chart method of picking stocks, you just need a lot of experience. I’ve looked at so many charts now I can just glance at one and guess where the price is going.</p>
<p>[Virtual</a> Stock Exchange - Home](<a href=“Virtual Stock Exchange - MarketWatch”>Virtual Stock Exchange - MarketWatch)</p>
<p>I do this for fun…will use real $$ when I start making a profit on the game consistently. I have a habit of forgetting about it for a few weeks, then finding it’s tanked.</p>