Welcome to the new Traders Laboratory! Please bear with us as we finish the migration over the next few days. If you find any issues, want to leave feedback, get in touch with us, or offer suggestions please post to the Support forum here.
Reveletron
-
Content Count
3 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Introduce Yourself Here - Don't Be Shy!!
Reveletron replied to trading4life's topic in Beginners Forum
Thanks zdo for the articulate and thoughtful response. I am already starting to feel the weight of this pursuit, so your comments make it all the clearer. I think what daunts me the most right now is, having no financial background, the overwhelming learning curve involved and the complexity of the field, all the moving parts. Most courses tackle the broad trading concepts, but it is still at a general overview level. Reading a few books is not enough, and to implement the concepts in an ongoing flow state would take years. And of course everyone tries to impress by promising $1,500 a day, etc. It's so much more than that. Even reading posts from some other traders here, who have been trading for three years, and just starting to nail down their own rules, what works and what doesn't, and just starting to consistently turn a profit. Still, no one goes into specifics - which is what I need to know. And no one seems to cover (courses, videos and books I am looking at) the technical side of getting set up. How do you choose a broker, how do you open an account, how do you set up the account, how do you set up the necessary charts on your monitor to watch, and will this even work on a Mac? How do you find stocks and actually trade, and what is out there that I do not know that will empty my account. So yeah, I'm not sure. This is scary stuff. But I am sufficiently fascinated to keep learning, and maybe trade when I am comfortable. It is certainly not easy work or easy money. Cheers, Chris -
Introduce Yourself Here - Don't Be Shy!!
Reveletron replied to trading4life's topic in Beginners Forum
I saw The Big Short recently and became fascinated. I read the book. I'm reading other books now. I have no illusions about overnight success, I'm just trying to learn and absorb as much as I can, and eventually start trading conservatively. I need some occupation with a flexible schedule, because my son lives far away and I need to be able to see him for weeks at a time, and I simply cannot have a conventional full time, or even part time, job. I also need to be able to travel for personal reasons. I have studied online marketing and business for a while, but I simply do not have a product to sell, I can't think of anything to be or do. And I'm not paying $1200 for a drop shipping course from the other pesky marketers who are trying to make a dollar off me. This is something I want to pursue and understand... And I would probably paper trade for a while too. Anyway I have LOTS of detailed questions so I hope this forum is a good place to be. Cheers, Chris -
Hi Everybody, I'm Chris. I'm recently fascinated with trading, hoping to eventually get started. I've read a couple books and watched a lot of videos. I have two fundamental questions. Let's say I buy 100 shares of a stock at $35 = $3500 cost. It goes up to $40, and my hunch is to get out there. Profit = $500. Obviously other examples may gross better wins, but why would I risk $3500 to make $500? Why doesn't everybody trade options, where my downside is fixed, and my upside is many many times that? What am I missing? Secondly, how are these profits taxed? I have never seen this mentioned, but I vaguely remember when I read about penny stocks that holding a stock for a very short period, triggers a very high taxation rate. I understand as a newbie I should focus on trading well and not the money, but I can't help but wonder. Thanks for any input!