Hello,
I stumbled across this massage board and got a good impression, so may I introduce myself. I've just had a 7-year break from dealing and my limited knowledge and experience is very rusty. I'm a single, middle-aged Brit. I started trading US stocks back in 2001. I jumped in at the deep end, kind of, although I already had a rudimentary knowledge of TA, having absorbed a few books on the subject. The rest, I learned as I went along. After one year, and about 350 trades later, I found I still hadn't broke even, and was down about 25% on my total investment, so I concluded that share dealing wasn't for me. Not in a bear market, anyway. Nevertheless, despite the loss, I enjoyed trading, and learned quite lot during that year. I think I did better in the second half of that year... I might have done better if I had been a long=term investor rather than a day trader, but I don't think that would have been exciting enough for me at the time.
Now, after my 7-year break, I have some cash to play with again, having unloaded my house and paid off all my debts on the same month the market started to dive. So I'm looking to jump back into some other form of investing or trading at some point very soon. I've been trying to refresh my memory of the dealing experience I gained in 2001. And there has been a lot of developments on the www since then, so I've got some major mental-updating to do.
This time, I'm leaning towards more of a swing trading approach. I hope this is sensible. I'm also thinking of dabbling in the UK market this time around, having learned that one can do it within an ISA and not be taxed. I just opened an account with FasTrade and also FirstDirect. God, that platform looks so basic, compared to Ameritrade, the broker I was using in 2001!
I'm interested in learning about trading the indexes, and how to trade currencies and futures. Can anyone suggest where I can get a good basic understanding of these fields? Or would I be wiser to stick to stocks? I looked into spread betting, but I'm not sure it's for me.
Anyway, enough about me. Thanks for reading. Any guidance, suggestions would be much appreciated.
Al Ackero (England)
I stumbled across this massage board and got a good impression, so may I introduce myself. I've just had a 7-year break from dealing and my limited knowledge and experience is very rusty. I'm a single, middle-aged Brit. I started trading US stocks back in 2001. I jumped in at the deep end, kind of, although I already had a rudimentary knowledge of TA, having absorbed a few books on the subject. The rest, I learned as I went along. After one year, and about 350 trades later, I found I still hadn't broke even, and was down about 25% on my total investment, so I concluded that share dealing wasn't for me. Not in a bear market, anyway. Nevertheless, despite the loss, I enjoyed trading, and learned quite lot during that year. I think I did better in the second half of that year... I might have done better if I had been a long=term investor rather than a day trader, but I don't think that would have been exciting enough for me at the time.
Now, after my 7-year break, I have some cash to play with again, having unloaded my house and paid off all my debts on the same month the market started to dive. So I'm looking to jump back into some other form of investing or trading at some point very soon. I've been trying to refresh my memory of the dealing experience I gained in 2001. And there has been a lot of developments on the www since then, so I've got some major mental-updating to do.
This time, I'm leaning towards more of a swing trading approach. I hope this is sensible. I'm also thinking of dabbling in the UK market this time around, having learned that one can do it within an ISA and not be taxed. I just opened an account with FasTrade and also FirstDirect. God, that platform looks so basic, compared to Ameritrade, the broker I was using in 2001!
I'm interested in learning about trading the indexes, and how to trade currencies and futures. Can anyone suggest where I can get a good basic understanding of these fields? Or would I be wiser to stick to stocks? I looked into spread betting, but I'm not sure it's for me.
Anyway, enough about me. Thanks for reading. Any guidance, suggestions would be much appreciated.
Al Ackero (England)
