Troy:
Welcome aboard. Here is some answers to your questions. Please note that these are my opinions only and other experienced investors here may have different opinions.
1. If you are new to investing, read as much as books and other common literature, market reports, etc. as possible. Watch any television programs or radio programs, if you can. Knowledge is power.
2. Regarding Wade Cook's book and promotional videos, I don't know how good they are. There are other people in this thread who can answer very well any questions you have regarding Wade. I read about three chapters of Wade's book and realized that it is not for me because his ideas sounded very easy to make money in stocks (and I know it is not). However, I got some thing out of reading those three chapters, i.e. rolling stocks.
3. Yes, there are rolling stocks. But, you have to look very hard and follow them carefully for some time before investing in them.
4. I do not know any thing about E-trade or eBroker. But, I have seen lot of complaints about E-trade. So, do your research before signing up with any body. I use Datek (http://www.datek.com) and a local broker in my town. I use my Datek on-line account exclusively for short term trading. They charge $9.99 per trade and give me free real time quotes in NASDAQ and NYSE. I have a report titled "ranking of brokers". If you want a copy, please email me. I will email you a copy of that report. Also, there are threads for each brokerages in SI. Please go thru them.
5. I divide my investments in two types; long term and short term. This way I'm trying to get the best out of both types of investments. Since I use different brokerages for each type of investments, I can focus very well in each type of investments separately.
6. As for doing research, the best place is Edgar. It is free but very cumbersome. You have to read through pages of documents and most of the time it is awfully boring. However, once you get used to it, I found that they are worth more than any thing you can get from other sources. Most of the time investor packages from companies and talking with IR person are helpful, but it is hard to see any bad signals about a particular company from these sources. The other best source is talking to some employees of a particular company (if you can) and trying out their products and competitor's products. You should know that there are no limitations to what you can do to research a company. However, some other people may say that you can completely forget about this and solely depend on technical approach of a stock. My experience is that you should use both whenever possible and use your judgement to fill in the blanks.
7. Yes, there are several places in the internet and SI where you can look up informations and learn more about investing. Go through each sections in SI and read as much you can. Also, please read Individual Investor, Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily, Barrons, etc. whenever you can. They will provide you enough information about the current market condition. And most importantly do not believe every thing you read especially in the internet.
Hopefully I answered some of your questions. And I know that other people will add to my thoughts.
Good luck to you in your endeavors,
--Salim |
