best system for learning

jimmydean

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Morning all,

I'm going to ask a fairly generic question here and apologies beforehand... but what do you think is the best system for a complete novice, like myself, to begin to understand the principles of the stock market?

I have no intention of investing any money anytime soon. I want to make sure I have done enough research to the point where I feel I am confident to make my first trade. Considering how much information and learning there is on trading that's not going to be for a while! Any pointers you can put my way I'd be very grateful.

Bit about my background I'm 26 years old and worked in healthcare for the last 5 years.

Cheers,

Jim :|
 
Sign up to a spread betting firm with a demo account, this will give you a good understanding of terminology, position sizes and the different types of markets. I would never recommend to put any of your hard earned into one of these spreadbetting firms though, for numerous different reasons.
 
It depends

In reply to jimmydean's post, I think it all depend on your personality, objective and time available, etc.
Personality - do you like quick action, video game? Or do you like fishing, reading, chess, etc?
Objective - beat the inflation? Get regular side income? speculate big time?
Time available - for learning, research.
I think it is best that you can answer some of these questions before you dive in.
A few very good books as a starter - (1)Trading For A Living (Alexander Elder); (2) Market Wizards (Jack Schwager); (3) The Reminiscence Of A Stock Operator (Edwin Lefevre)
Good luck to you investment / trading journey!
 
Hi Jim,
Welcome to T2W.

When you first registered on the site, you were sent a welcome e-mail with some links to Sticky threads that are also shown in my signature, below. Have you read them? If not, start there and report back with any comments or questions.
Tim.
 
Plus 500 noob here :)

Hi Jim

I am also a novice, well im like a baby looking up at all the pretty candles wide eyed with no real clue as to what it is :D So I feel we are in the same boat.

I have been using Plus 500 with a £20,000 demo account. I have been able to learn the basics; long, short, spreads ect. There is Forex, ETFs, Commodities ect. There are also tools like ATR and MACD (although I know what they are I dont really know how to use them (n))

Me and a few of my friends also started a competition which is a function on the platform. You get a 1k balance (which I thaught was realistic as opposed to the 20k) and you can trade from there. It proves just how hard it is unless you know what your looking for. As an example in 3 days one of my friends lost was down to £50, lol! Risk management? not for him.

Im still bobbling around £1050... so its a learning curve.

I have learned that a platform with level 2 quotes would me a really big advantage. So maybe look at that.

Hope this helps.

Zavo~
 
Sorry but your "orientation" toward the problem is misguided. The problem of becoming a great trader is not one of knowledge some would argue but one of skill.

If you want to go down the skill path then what I recommend is just getting the "gist" of how various people trade but don't attempt to really learn what they are doing. All you need is some idea and then you can learn on your own. You really don't need nor even want to learn the exact specifics as such information in published print is usually wrong, outdated, or incomplete. So, your not really going to learn to trade from a book but you can get some ideas and the ideas that make the most sense, you can incorporate those into your trading.

For example, the most basic types of viewing the market are technical and fundamental analysis. Technical analysis basically involves looking at the market generated data to make trade decisions whereas fundamental analysis involves evaluating the fundamental data. Shorter term traders tend to use technical data while longer term traders tend to favor fundamental data.

Now, if you want to go pursue it more from the academic side you'll want to study efficient markets, portfolio theory, hedge funds, and maybe system development.

Morning all,

I'm going to ask a fairly generic question here and apologies beforehand... but what do you think is the best system for a complete novice, like myself, to begin to understand the principles of the stock market?

I have no intention of investing any money anytime soon. I want to make sure I have done enough research to the point where I feel I am confident to make my first trade. Considering how much information and learning there is on trading that's not going to be for a while! Any pointers you can put my way I'd be very grateful.

Bit about my background I'm 26 years old and worked in healthcare for the last 5 years.

Cheers,

Jim :|
 
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