There are skills we each pick up during various times in our lives. When I started high school I was one of the very rare kids around me that had not yet learned to ice skate. It was in Kingston, Ontario, so you can imagine how rare this would be. My dad rented a back-hoe and dug out and area in the yard and filled it with water. When I first put on my skates, my ankles couldn't keep them upright and in my wobbly wa y I tried to figure out how to bend and push to get my skates to propel me forward. I did eventually figure it out of course, but it was initially hard work.
I opened a paper trading account with TD Ameritrade, using their 'thinkorswim' platform. Apparently, without money in an account I get 2 months. Disappointing, but I have to start somewhere, and I'm not about to throw money away learning. I'll take the virtual trading while I can, thank you!
I've been approaching it in baby steps. It's still all quite foreign to me. The interface is not very intuitive oand I'm still learning where to put windows and how to make them in relation to each other. Sizing the time frame for each is still a bit uncertain but I'm slowly getting the hang of it, I think. What I have not yet done is configure hotkeys, nor how to figure out how to put in trailing stops. The exact choices of buying types and selling types I am not yet solid on, but I've experienced exactly how bad an idea it is to sell using Market orders. On one occasion I took a $30 gain and made it a $6 gain instead. So, the buying and selling mechanics I have to become more familiar with.
I understand the basics of how to scan for the types of stocks I'm looking for, so there's one step I'm not terrible at. And I've learned how to take the choices I want to look at more closely and put them in a watchlist. What I'm lacking are the right knowledge bits to know where to enter a trade, and as mentioned above, how to put in a trailing stop loss.
I also joined the Bearish Bulls trade group. So far I haven't really utilized them much, but as I get better acquainted with the trading platform I'll get more involved. They have a morning show where they discuss stocks to keep a close eye on, with a mind to trade. They use skype as a daily chatroom for traders, and provide a watchlist at night with some stocks they recommend looking at more closely.
As I've virtually traded two days now, I'm starting to realize how much I don't know and it's daunting. Fighting with the platform only makes the process more tedious as all I want to do is get it all working as I'd like and so I understand how to do what I want to do with it, so that I can stop fretting over it and can start trying to work at recognizing good stocks to trade by looking at them, and then looking for the patterns I want to recognize so that I can learn when to enter the trades, where to put my stop-losses, and where to take my profits.
Baby steps.
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