Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I'm a swing trader. My homepage is set to open four tabs: Bloomberg, 247wallst, Yahoo World Indices and Clear Station (though I dont trade through etrade). But I look around elsewhere throughout the day, too, and Clear Station is in the "transitory" tab.
After market close I check in at Barry Reitholz's blog.
What do you read for guidance and "the big picture"? Online or paper.
Last edited by delusianne; 04-06-2008 at 09:00 AM..
Reason: "wallst47"
I'm a novice trader (as you know), I use Investors.com, the research and analysis tools at TradeKing (my brokerage), Money central at MSN, Morningstar and Yahoo finance. Clear Station looks interesting, too, I hadn't heard of that one.
Hummm...
I've been interested in learning to trade for awhile.
Any suggestions on how, where to start? There are so many how to trade commericials. Are they legit or just scams?
I know some want you to come to their seminars costing thousands of dollars. Thanks.
Hummm...
I've been interested in learning to trade for awhile.
Any suggestions on how, where to start? There are so many how to trade commericials. Are they legit or just scams?
I know some want you to come to their seminars costing thousands of dollars. Thanks.
I read "The Successful Investor" by William O'Neil (founder of Investor's Business Daily, a newspaper). It's the first investment book I ever read that attempts to teach you anything other than conservative, buy and hold investing.
While much of the book is an advertisement for his newspaper and website, you can learn how to pick and analyze growth stocks on your own. And there's a lot of information about technical analysis, i.e., chart reading. Also, it's written in easy to understand terms. So I'd recommend this book, or maybe his earlier one, "How to Make Money in Stocks". From what I understand, "The Successful Investor" is pretty much an update of the earlier book.
Or do web search for 'CAN SLIM' investing, or visit Investors.com, some of the info there is free.
I use to trade some, back in halcyon days of DCLK and JNPR going up by double digits every day.
I use to do all kinds of things...subscribed to realmoney.com, read thestreet.com. Read CBS marketwatch. Subscribed to a few charting services.
After some experience (of markets going straight up, straight down, sideways, volatility contracting, volatility expanding, different sectors being hot, tech, energy, etc), I think the vast majority of services or newsletters are a waste of time. I still get emails in my junk box from Cramer...."How to survive the new bear market". Or, "Only $95 for XYZ service."
Besides reading current things, I would read old things, old stories to gain perspective. Business Week has searchable archives online to '95 free. Look at some of the headlines and stories, they constantly repeat.
In investing books, you'll read about the manic depressive market. One minute its happy, one minute its depressed/suicidal. Magazine covers are a great way to visualize this. I've saved alot of them chronologically in jpg form, you can visualize the market really well.
Business Week last Feb ran a cover..."It's a low, low, low rate world". It went on about, how rates would stay low. Right before things blew up.
Something that suprises me is how quickly things are forgotten about. In 2003 there was the "Crisis at Nasdaq". Who remembers that? Home Depot was hot in 2006. Then it blew up in 07.
There are some things I use to believe in....technical analysis for example. I dont know if I ever believed in it 100%, but I did use it. After awhile though, I think you have to pay attention to the fundamentals. Bear Stearns for example. The charts wouldn't tell you that it could go to $5. Or the mortgage companies that have gone bust. The moving averages wont tell you, they made a huge mistake. I'm suprised there isnt more challenge to ta, or at least more critical thought.
In most investing books, its either ta, fundamentals or maybe both. But they dont really use ta, and then show obvious examples that make you wonder about it.
I think one overlooked area for traders is the ability to synthesize information from different sources. Besides the usual rules of money management, keeping your emotions in check, etc.
Thats one of the flaws of seminars on stocks that cost thousands. They're too linear, trying to reduce trading down to one, two, three steps. I dont know...any thoughts?
A few more good sources of information are CNBC TV and the SEC website, along with certain trader blogs that provide insights from institutional traders. A couple of other books that I've found to be helpful are Bernard Malkiel's "A Random Walk Down Wall Street," Ben Graham's "The Intelligent Investor" (especially ch.8), and Gregory Millman's "The Day Traders" (for a history of the day trader as a rogue). The important thing to keep in mind if you're going to be a trader is to take profits when they present themselves. I've been trading since 1999 and have not only survived, but thrived during volatile markets. While everyone else gets their hopes up, leverages their portfolios beyond reason, and buys into what the pundits (on tv and online/print) are saying, good research and judicious decision-making can reap great rewards.
I was asking other traders what they like to glance over in the mornings to get themselves into a comfortable frame of mind for the day's trading decisions. I listed a few places I visit online to get a feel for the day's sentiment, what's in store.
Right now, though it's too early, I'm looking at the Asian and European market streaming quotes at Yahoo Market Indices, which features supplemental headlines from Reuters.
I look at the economic calendar at the Nasdaq.
Also I go by earnings.com every few days to see what's coming up.
I dont watch news on TV now but I used to watch Maria Bartoromo down in the pit - she was excellent. She wrote a valuable book a few years ago about screening out noise, sorting the real news from the trash in the blizzard of information we're hit with every day.
If you're watching that many things every morning, the first thing you should be looking at is the CME Globex flash quotes for the index futures. That gives an indication where the market will open in the morning.
Almost 70 percent of the market rally since the reversal on the 17th has occurred as a result of the premium of the S&P index futures over the cash market at the open of the securities exchanges. In a downturn, the distortions caused by the overnight futures buying is not as pronounced.
Ichoro and CreditWitch, thanks! Ichoro, for futures I'd been watching the world markets at Yahoo, but hadn't known about the CME Global Flash quotes - thanks.
Happy trades to you!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
