Newbie going through a sharp learning curve

Happy new Year to all,

I am rather new to trading; intention is to do it fulltime, but with limited funds, so exercising discipline is of paramount importance.

I am based in London - a very expensive city, and one thought that keeps resurfacing is that trading can be conducted from anywhere in the world, provided reliable broadband services can be taken for granted.

I have always been interested in the stock markets, although have never worked in that environment, and it was back in March 2006 when I started looking into trading. My initial approach was to observe the impact on the markets that any economic releases had (mainly USA and its repercussions in Western Europe, etc.). The fundamentals being interest rate policies, unemployment, GDP, inflation, trade balances, gold, oil, £ strength/weakness, to name a few. I started logging these, along with any obvious impact they may have had on market indices. I focused mainly on the macro side. I would also view some "trend" charts from time to time.

Around November 2006, I decided to examine charting and the various theories deployed. I must admit to being mesmerised at first with Elliot Waves, Fibonacci, bolli bands, MACDs, RSI, etc. With lack of any direct instruction and only brief guidance notes (unless one subscribes), I started by reading input from various forums, seemingly populated by professional traders, using languages I was not at first familiar with, but in time, I started undersatnding some, and gained a little confidence. However, I then started questioning whether trading should be based only on fundamentals, or TA (as some professionals do) or a combination. For now, I am of the opinion that one cannot ignore either of the 2 principles. I then discovered this forum yesterday, and felt at ease in the knowledge that there are gurus here who share knowledge in a sympathetic manner; thank you all for that.

I found it very refreshing to see trading from the "KISS" perspective, and would recommend all newbies to familiarise themselves with the notions of trends, momentum, volatility and market strength (although in my ventures, volumes & related indicators are not easily available).

As for charting (TA) I have also picked up some knowledge in identifying shapes (triangles, wedges, flags, consolidation channels, divergencies, etc.). I do however struggle with configuring the "period" element on Moving Averages. Perhaps someone can direct us newbies to calculate these for different timeframes & intervals. I read somewhere that for a 1 minute chart, the period should be configured as 510, for a 2 minute chart, 255 and for 5 min chart, 102. The difficulty I encounter is what period config is required for a 20 dma, 50 dma on say a 3month daily chart and a 3m 60 minute chart. Hopefully, there will be a relatively simple answer, and I could draw comfort from an expert's opinion, since I am still in an uptrend on my learning curve! Apologies if I should have addressed this on a more specific technical thread.

Anyway, so much for my ramblings, I hope to remain active in this forum. In the future, I hope to be able to seek out "data mining" features and "realtime" volumes, so any suggestions welcome.

thanks.



around

Hi Bimmerbob
visit http://www.swing-trade-stocks.com/
I think you will find this useful,pl.let me know your openion
Regards
Niranjanam

Thanks for the link - I'll certainly look at it in due course.

I would suggest you get a mix of Technical and Fundamental inputs, which , working together, yield v good results.

Specially if you plan to do trading/investing other than intraday

Also , get hold of some classic TA book, e.g Edwards and Magee (Technical Analysis of stock trends) which will help u in big picture analysis as well

Good luck
AGILENT

hi all,

i'm here new, to know more about intraday, short term investments.