Plainview So I’ve always been interested in this, and I have some good sources (my uncle is very high up in Merrill Lynch, for one), but I have no idea how to start on my own.
Suggestions?
You have to decided what type of a trader you want to be. Are you someone who wants to buy and sell a lot, or are you someone who wants to buy, hold on for a while, and sell when it's hopefully gone up substantially, or are you someone who is looking for longer term investments? The days of getting in very low and exploding are long gone.
I guess you can consider me a day trader that holds on to never sell for a loss. True day traders are complete out of holdings by the bell. They don't hold anything overnight and have a loss guard on almost every trade to automatically sell if they hit a certain percentage down. That's not me. I will sell and trade in a minute if a stock pops. If it's down, or hasn't reached a good return %, I have no problems holding onto a stock. To be able to trade daily and frequently, you need a minimum of $25,000 portfolio value to do that. If not, you'll most likely be the second person I described above.
Me, I have long term mutual funds in a retirement account. Then, I have my "day trading" account. I don't touch the retirement account. I should have dumped all of the mutual funds back in March and threw it all into Apple, Amazon, etc. I would have probably tripled my retirement portfolio. I was too scared as to where the world was going.
I can delve deeper into the metrics of everything, but I don't feel like thinking more when I'm trading. I may do it in the future. There are a couple of really good trading chat rooms. Most are s*** and scams run by dudebro traders that gather together and drive a stock up and dump it. They did it with Tesla, not sure how it hasn't collapse yet tough. It's something I spend an hour or so on during the day at work, if even that. It's very easy to set a buy limit and an automatic exit. It just takes a little thought to see where things are and where you think they will go.
For good overall education, Investopedia. They cover a lot of subjects.
This is a "trading" introduction.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/trading/05/011705.asp
This is an "investing" introduction.
https://www.investopedia.com/investing-essentials-4689754