If you are new to stocks it is really important to determine your goals up front. Are you looking to take control of your 401K retirement account? Do you want to quit your job?

Depending on what you goal is for your investments you might want to trade stocks or you might want to invest in stocks.

stock chart

Day Trading vs Value Investing

So Day Trading is going to be a shorter term trading period where you are much more active in stocks day to day. You can intraday trade a trade which is buying or selling the same day.

If you hold a trade for more than one day say opening on Monday and then close it on Wednesday then you would be swing trading.

Now how does this differ from value investing? Value investing is going to be a longerterm approach of years. This is the buy it and hold it method which tends to be long biased over the years.

What is long biased? Well that is when you are expecting the stock to go up. Now why would you think that the stocks are going up in general.

Well many companies in the US offer retirement accounts that buy and hold these stocks longterm. So when the mutual funds are buying a stock what’s going to happen when they place a long order. You would expect it go up.

So now you know the simple difference between day trading versus value investing. Maybe you want to know some books that you can read to learn a bit more in depth.

bookstore

Best Stock Market Books for Beginners

The classic book for someone that wants to be a day trader is Reminiscenses of a Stock Operator. That has classic terms and examples that are relevant even today.

When you are learning a sport you need to have a good coach. Brett Sternberger is a an amazing pyschologist and person and his words in The Daily Trading Coach have helped numerous traders evaluate themselves.

If you want to learn trade using the darkpool. The Dark Pool Secrets book has helped to change my trading by Stefanie Kammerman and as a result we are working together in the Training Pit teaching people to trade.

An amazing book for someone brand new to longer term trading is Michele Schneider’s book Plant your Money Tree where you learn about the market view and different sectors. You can review the market and how it could impact bigger decisions such as a career pic for your child in College.

Another Series of books that helps educate active day traders is Market Wizards series by Jack Schwager. The tips and techniques that experienced traders share in interviews.

An amazing book that is great for longer term investment trading is Brian Shannon’s Technical Analysis Using Multiple Timeframes Brian is amazing and his development of Anchor VWAP is an incredible tool that will blow your mind for longer term trading.

How to get into stock investing

So now that you know the differences between trading and investing what is the next step to investing.

You might have a 401k already which you could ask if it is possible to self direct. I am not a financial advisor, but you could ask them if you are not able to self direct it to transfer or roll it over to Fidelity.

Fidelity will allow you to trade in a 401K. There are likely other brokerages that are available out there if you ask.

You can also open a regular account with a broker, it does depend on where you are in the world with regulations which brokers you can use.

Stock Brokers For Beginners

If you are looking for a great broker that offers lots of tools an training, Think or Swim is great with all the tools they offer.

Interactive Brokers is a bit more of a technical broker, but they offer the best commisions at the time of writing this post. There software is a bit confusing and technical at first, but then you get the hang of it.

For the active day traders another great broker is CenterPoint securities. Center Point is really good for those that like to short stocks, especially the harder to find stocks with lower floats.

If you are someone that knows about trading options, which in my opinion you should learn after learning about trading stocks. Tasty Works is amazing for those in the US. Tom Sosnoff developed Think or Swim and sold it and later developed Tasty Works.

More brokers for the US 

Here you can find the top  brokers:

What is the right time to Invest?

Again that comes back to your question of timeframe for holding the stock.

Are you looking for longer term timeframe? If you are potentially considering a longer term time frame with anticipation that you think the stock will go up a couple of pennies on your entry might not make a difference in the big picture.

If you are looking for shorter timeframe of day trading , then the entry and exit of your trades make a huge difference.

The best times of day for day trading tend to be after the chop of open has picked a direction for the day and the stock meets a criteria for entry whether long or short.

The best times to enter a swing trade tend to be in the last 15 min of the day. Simply little slogan.

It it ends strong go long and if it looks like it’s time to abort then go short.

I will cover what I mean by that slogan in another post.

It is also very important to manage your risk properly as well. The best thing to map out before you get into a trade is your entry and exit strategy.

Acting in haste and emotion will likely end up in a losing trade.

Ready to Start Learning

I have created a couple of online videos to help you in your journey. Ones that I wished were out when I started my day trading journey. 

I have also partnered as an educator in The Training Pit that was created to help people learn from zero knowledge or to reset your training. 

I hope this post has helped you learn a bit more about trading and investing. As you can tell helping people is very fulfilling and the whole reason why this blog began in 2015. I will be sure to write more how to in the area to help you in your journey.

I love hearing feedback from you. It makes my trading more personal and I like to hear how I can help you. If you would like to be in Training Pit with me sign up here or if you want one on one training you can email me jane@thedarkpools.com You can contact me here or Twitter (@ItsAirplaneJane), Instagram (missairplanejane), LinkedIn and Facebook (@sugarairplanejane) or YouTube

The tool I use for scanning and alerting is Trade Ideas who offer an always free trading room. You can receive 5% off with Promo code CARPEPROFIT15 all caps when you sign up here for your first year or month

Trade Ideas will be offering the quarterly full access test drive of their software their software in Nov 2019 for the cost of data fees $9. 

Another amazing software is Trendspider that has a new innovative rain drop candlestick that shows the volume for the morning session and afternoon session as far as the weight of it in price action. You can try them for free for 7 days here and receive 20% off with MTS20

My book is available at Amazon FMJ Trust Transition Trade: How Successful Traders Said It, Did It, and Lived It . As well as  Barnes and Noble, Indigo, Chapters,and more.

For my charts I use tradingview.com which offer free charting and paid services.

Also Stocks To Trade that has a 2 week $7 trial

This blog is for informational and educational purposes. I am not a registered securities broker-dealer or an investment adviser. The information here is not intended as securities brokerage, investment or as an offer or solicitation of an offer to sell or buy, or as an endorsement, recommendation or sponsorship of any security or fund.

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