| If you want to learn about ants, you watch ants, not take a course or read a book. Subscribe to a cheap realtime service that will chart down to one minute intervals, preferably including the ability to chart the "nominal price" (the average of the bid and the ask). If it can chart tick data and provide time and sales, so much the better. Pick a high volume stock and watch it every day, every minute, for several days. Get a feel for randomness, persistence, time durations, periodicity, predictability. If you have a mathematical bent, characterize price and volume behavior in every way you can think of. Overlay price with short term simple moving averages (5, 10, 15, 20 periods) and observe the interactions with each other and price. Draw trend lines and observe confirmations and violations. Draw Fibonacci levels and observe how price behaves there. Observe the action around round numbers. Form your OWN theory of the market and what works. Note how trends start (a v- or tweezers-bottom, a second higher bar, price crosses the 5ma, a third higher bar, the 5 ma turns up, price crosses the 15ma, etc. Pick some point in this sequence of events as your "system." Codify that into simple trading rules. Then just dive in and trade those rules small at a cheap reliable broker like IB. You can read all the books and take all the courses you want, but it doesn't really sink in until you DO it. The best lessons are the ones you learned the hard way, with money on the line. |
