Legendary investor Warren Buffett defines investing as “the process of laying out money now in the expectation of receiving more money in the future.” The goal of investing is to put your money to work in one or more types of investment vehicles in the hopes of growing your money over time.
When you get your head on straight, you can embark on learning trading and start with these five basic steps.
1. Open a Trading Account
Sorry if it seems we're stating the obvious, but you never know! (Remember the person who did everything to set up his new computer—except to plug it in?) Find a good online stock broker and open a stock brokerage account. Even if you already have a personal account, it's not a bad idea to keep a professional trading account separate. Become familiar with the account interface and take advantage of the free trading tools and research offered exclusively to clients. A number of brokers offer virtual trading.
2. Market Crash Course
Financial articles, stock market books, website tutorials, etc. There's a wealth of information out there, much of it inexpensive to tap. It's important not to focus too narrowly on one single aspect of the trading game. Instead, study everything market-wise, including ideas and concepts you don't feel are particularly relevant at this time. Trading launches a journey that often winds up at a destination not anticipated at the starting line. Your broad and detailed market background will come in handy over and over again, even if you think you know exactly where you’re going right now.
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Start to follow the market every day in your spare time. traders didn't have to monitor global markets a couple of decades ago, but that’s all changed due to the rapid growth of electronic trading and derivative instruments that link equity, markets around the world.)
3. Analyze
Study the basics and look at price charts—thousands of them—in all time frames. You may think offers a better path to profits because it tracks growth curves and revenue streams, but traders live and die by price action that diverges sharply from underlying fundamentals. Do not stop reading company spreadsheets, because they offer a trading edge over those who ignore them. However, they won’t help you survive your first year as a trader.
Your experience with charts and technical analysis now brings you into the magical realm of price prediction. Theoretically, securities can only go higher or lower, encouraging a long-side trade . In reality, prices can do many other things, including chopping sideways for weeks at a time or whipsawing violently in both directions, shaking out buyers and sellers.
The time horizon becomes extremely important at this juncture. Financial markets grind out trends that generate independent price movements at short-term, intermediate-term, and long-term intervals. This means a security or index can carve out a long-term uptrend, intermediate downtrend, and a short-term trading range, all at the same time. Rather than complicate prediction, most trading opportunities will unfold through interactions between these time intervals.
4. Practice Trading
It’s now time to get your feet wet without giving up your trading stake. virtual trading, offers a perfect solution, allowing the neophyte to follow real-time market actions, making buying and selling decisions that form the outline of a theoretical performance record. It usually involves the use of a stock market simulator that has the look and feel of an actual stock exchange's performance. Make lots of trades, using different holding periods and strategies, and then analyze the results for obvious flaws.
So, when do you make the switch and start trading with real money? There’s no perfect answer because simulated trading carries a flaw that’s likely to show up whenever you start to trade for real, even if your paper results look perfect.
Traders need to coexist peacefully with the twin emotions of greed and fear. Paper trading doesn’t engage these emotions, which can only be experienced through actual profit and loss. In fact, this psychological aspect forces more first-year players out of the game than bad decision-making. Your baby steps forward as a new trader need to recognize this challenge and address remaining issues with money and self-worth.
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