Software:
If you are using a Mac, then get ProTA. Period.
If you are using a PC, Jenna's and Walt's suggestions are good, but if you want to start at an introductory level, go to stockwiz.com and download the free version of StockWiz.
You will need some historical and daily data to do any kind of analysis, and you can get the entire stock database downloaded (open/high/low/close/volume) every night for about $10 a month I think. For historical data, I would suggest tradepbs.com which gives you the data, although it might require some calesthentics to get it in the right format. Otherwise, you can get some free data from stockwiz just to play with the package.
Once you have the data, and I recommend playing with free packages and free data first for several months, including making paper (pretend) trades and seeing if you were right and learning from that first. I've actually used about 20 TA packages for the PC, about 30 neural net shells (four specifically for financial markets), 4 Mac packages and one UNIX application (don't go there...) All of them are tailored to use basically the same data, and most have the basic indicators and allow for some degree of customization (not recommnded unless you understand the underlying principles and indicators).
Suffice to say there are tons of them out there, including new ones being developed all the time (including by yours truely). The caveat is that one needs to appreciate that equities respond to thier own sector influences to varying degrees, and react differently to different conditions - something we may gloss over in our daily posts.
Use the free stuff first. And whatever you do, don't ever kid yourself. You do it until you get it right, and then the market indicators will drift and you have to stay aware enough notice those small and subtle signals or you will mess up big. I was going to draw an analogy to relationships here, but decided that cost a lot more and could be much more dangerous...just kidding
lastshadow |
