Start Understanding the Stock Market and Stop Loosing Your Shirt Trading Stocks

Lessons from These Professionals can save you Time and Money

If you are interested in understanding the stock market, then you will need to begin to study it. There are multitudes of ways to trade stocks and learning one way may be all that you need to make the difference between winning and losing. There are basic concepts which you must become familiar with before you become a consistent winner in the stock market.

Understanding the stock market does not have to cost you a lot of money. I have seen people stand in line to pay up to $3,000 for a weekend stock trading course. However, now I would think long and hard about spending thousands of dollars on a weekend course.

I say this because, learning the stock market trading strategies listed below, which are available for a fraction of the price, can increase your ability to trade the stock market just as the more expensive courses can.

If you want to take a hands on approach to understanding the stock market and start to master the art of trading stocks then you will need to start getting educated. There are two areas which you will have to learn to start to pull money from the market. First you need to become disciplined and second you will need to learn about what makes a good stock trading system.

To become disciplined you will likely need to be coached on making some potentially minor changes to the way you think. This type of coaching will greatly increase your ability in understanding the stock market.

Also, you will need to learn at least one system to trade the stock market. The challenge is that there are so many ways to trade the market you will have to identify which one will work for you. Prior to reading Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager I thought that most good traders would follow a similar path. Yet Jack's book demonstrated that this was not the case.

In today’s market, getting educating is becoming easier all of the time. Now information about understanding the stock market can be delivered to you in the following forms: DVD, MP3, online video, online audio, books and e-books. There is sure to be a method available by which you can learn.

The Cost of Trading

In my quest to begin understanding the stock market and in order to learn technical analysis, I have read over 40 stock trading books and have paid to attended three trading courses. My first course was a one day course for $295. This was followed by a home study course which included videos and a study binder for $1,495 and finally, a 2 day live lecture on day trading for $995 which included video tapes and an instruction manual. Through my association with Investools (no longer available to the publid), I also attended three other weekend stock trading courses. In 2024 I was a part of Jake Bernstein's Small Group Mentoring program where Jake reviews, in fine detail, how the stragegies he uses are best traded.

I have also internalized that there are multiple ways to find stocks to trade and an unlimited number of ways to trade stocks. On this page, I review two methods which I have purchased. They are available from Amazon. If you are not interested in purchasing an educational product at this time I have provided a simple entry method on my stock trading strategies webpage. Note that this is just an entry method and not a fully described system as the ones discussed below are.

You come across information all of the time, some you look at and some you do not. Knowledge can come in many different forms and you never know where the piece that you are searching for will come from. 

The links below will lead you to two resources which you may not have considered before and will help you in understanding the stock market. Each offer will teach you something.

There will be a cost to learning to invest in the stock market. The main errors beginner traders make but which are easily corrected are:

1. Overtrading
2. Not having a trading plan
3. Making poor exits or entries
4. Having a poor money management system
5. Trading the wrong strategy for your personality

In my quest in understanding the stock market and a desire to learn about investing, I have read and studied the two educational products below. Both gave me more knowledge than I had before and were well worth the cost. By now, it is amazing to me that many people would rather lose money to the markets instead of understanding the stock market and learning how to play the game.

For you, if you can gain one piece of wisdom or trading idea through your purchase that improves your trading, I think you would agree that the information would be worth the price. As an example, a recent CD set I purchased for around $70 contained many interesting pieces of information, but the one bit of information that made the CD worth the price was found on one 5 minute section on one of the CDs.

Now let's explore the experiences I have had with two different educational materials.

I have take most of the course offered by Tyler Bollhorn, the author of The Mindless Investor. He started off in Calgary teaching smaller groups. His methods are outlined on his website StockScores. His basic concept is that when new information comes into the market, those that know, will act and either buy or sell the stock. He typically looks for stock charts that are going sideways to slightly rising and then in one day there is a high volume move that shows something is up. He has migrated more to day trading now and runs a daily day trading group. Understanding the price patterns discussed in The Mindless Investor will help you make wiser decisions regarding which stocks to buy.

David Graeme-Smith offers a very simple approach to trading in his book Short Swing Trading. I purchased this course many years ago and it has since been updated.  There was one really interesting comment regarding the look of a chart which made the book very worth while, which I still use when I trade. Described is a trading strategy which gets you into and out of the market generally within two weeks. David provided a complete set of trading rules which will progress your trading more than the current buy and hope strategy used by so many traders and investors today. Just by understanding the rules of his simple trading plan you should begin to see an improvement in your trading results.

Remember, it is the action you take today that will make a difference to you in the future and move you towards understanding the stock market. Taking no action will just get you more of what you are all ready getting. Which is great if you like where you are but not so great if you do not.

Consider the trading example below which shows a win and a loss for essentially the same set up. You will have losses as a trader. You need to accept this or you will not move forward. In both cases, the 50 SMA was rising and the %K Stochastic indicator crossed the %D. One trade was a win, one was a loss. This will occur all the time. It is how you treat the loss that will make a difference in your trading.

Stock chart courtesy of StockCharts.com.

PS - Understanding the stock market and learning technical analysis takes time and the ability to learn from ones mistakes. Also, you need to find a trading strategy which works for you. To speed up the process those in the know learn from those who are already successful. By reading the above trading strategies you will be starting this proven successful process.

Understanding the Stock Market

Totally grasp and understand that not all trades will be winners. You will have losing trades. I think the largest issue traders have is their mindset. To be a good trader, begins with understanding yourself and a few key principles. To get you started on your path to success, I have included a link to the Science of Getting Rich. The link below, which will open in a new window, will provide you with your very own copy of The Science of Getting Rich. This is a quick read and consists of only 49 pages. Remember, you must do things in a certain way if you want to improve in any area of your life. Click for a free PDF of The Science Of Getting Rich. When you can read an online PDF that's great, I prefer a paper copy. Depending on the printer you are using, you may find buying a copy of The Science of Getting Rich a better deal.

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