valerief

Hey everyone, Im new to trading, so I just thought I would introduce myself here. Im going to graduate with a bachelor's degree in Finance next year, so I decided to use the knowledge that I have so far to start trading. I must admit the stuff I learned in college so far was pretty much useless so I had to learn by myself for the last few months. My experience so far has only been with a simulated account. I was doing pretty well until last week... and then you know the story! So far my strategy has been to invest in new 52-week highs and small mkt cap stocks. I hope to use this forum as a tool to get some insights on trading and to hopefully get some of my questions answered!

Hey everyone, I'm brand new to this forum and to trading. Background: I'm 21 years old, going to get my bachelor's degree in Finance next year. I do have experience in business, I'm a co-founder of a non-profit helping orphans and I own a business with my family. Through this forum I hope to get some more insights and perhaps get ideas on how to succeed in this mess. Excuse my simple language and lack of knowledge, I'm still very new to this but I am a very fast learner! I decided to post my answers on the considerations posted in this thread so that I could get some feedback from more experienced people here. Motivation I want to trade to make money in the long term. I want to start small and learn from my mistakes to be able to build it up oer the years. Commitment I spent the summer learning, reading, following the news and building a simulated portfolio to get to know how the market works. I continue learning every day, so I commit a a few hours every day to follow up. Once I get a real portfolio, I'll commit even more time to it. After reading the forum posts and all that time learning, I realise that trading takes most of your time, energy and psychological stability. I read that checking your portfolio too often can also be bad. ANy thoughts on that? Timeframe and method Plan on having more of a long-term focus, technical analysis. Focus on new High/lows and small market cap. Account/investment size 5000k Money management When a stock decreases too much - sell and never buy it again... but I realise I will lose a lot of my money in the first years. Product Stock for starters, then bonds maybe. I keep my money in a savings account now. Broker IB or Questrade. Both have low commisions and the minimums to open an account are low (I'm 21). Questrade has a tax free trading account which would fit me, since it has a 5000$ contribution room. I heard that both are a nightmare when it comes to opening the account, but are ok once you have it started. Has anyone had that experience? Platform Questrade will not work on Mac which I use, so if chose that I will have to find a Windows PC. News source WSJ, Bloomberg platform, yahoo finance (for charts) are the ones I used so far. Anyone have others? Computer new mac Internet Connection stable Practice Trading A few months (this Summer) in simulated portfolio…so almost none at all! Books to Read Anyone can recommend a good one? Order Size 100-500 shares Disaster Planning I always have other laptops/computers available be it at home, college, work. There's also people who can do it for me if I'm unable to. Trading psychology I believe that you don't win if you don't take risks. I'm not a dreamer and I always keep realistic goals. However I believe in myself enough to know that with work, focus and determination I can succees. (I don't mean to sound arrogant though, because I'm not that kind of person at all!) Trading Discipline I'm ready for losses, I believe it will (hopefully) get better with experience. Although I know that most people don't succeed as much as they hope to. I'm ready to hear any of your comments, hopefully you guys don't discourage me too much...