How I got started in this trading stuff

A couple months ago I was browsing through Entrepreneur.com, reading articles to try to find some inspiration. Inspiration for a career, for a profitable hobby, to get out of bed... After I finished college and my first year of my career my life became pretty stagnant. What I though was my "dream career" turned out to be boring, not worth the time or money, and definitely didn't make me excited to get up in the morning. 

I don't know which Tim Sykes article I read but it was something about entrepreneur habits or how to be a millionaire by the time your 30..I think I read a few of his articles and that made my wonder, 'who is this guy?' So I read his profile on entrepreneur magazine and then I was hooked. 

I don't have any experience with stocks. I remember I wanted to buy $LGF back in 2011 when It was around $8/share. They had announced they would be making the Hunger Games movies and I remember thinking "these movies are going to be huge!". But I didn't know anything about trading and opening an account seemed so intimidating! What if there were hidden fees! Even a few hundred dollars was a lot of money to me back then.

After reading Tim's articles I watched probably 50 of his free YouTube videos that day as well as a few by other traders. Something about this "hobby" or "career" stuck with me. I could be my own boss, I could work as little or as much as I wanted, I wouldn't have only 2 weeks of precious vacation a year, I could work from home, and there wasn't really a limit to how much I could make (or lose). 

I signed up for an E-Trade account and deposited $1000. I downloaded E-Trade Pro (free 3 month trial. $99.99 after that) and started getting familiar. I made my own watch lists every night; I figured I might as well get into the habit even if I didn't really know what I was looking for. 

I googled "how to make a watch list" and followed the lead of other traders. At that time I didn't know the importance of volume or float or how news affected stock price.

My first bad ideas

One of the first stocks that caught my eye was $ISBG. They announced that they were going to buy back 250mil of their shares. I didn't know if this would make the price go up or down or if this was a good thing or bad. From the amount of googling I did I determined that this usually made the price go up. When they first announced this the price per share was .0006. I wanted to buy (even though I had only been researching to stock market for about a week). but the money I deposited in my E-Trade account took a week (maybe more I don't remember) to be available for investing. 

The stock price crept up and by the time my money was available the price was .0014, more than double what it was when I first wanted to buy it. I decided to buy anyway and I think I bought 3 stocks that first day. I was SOO eager to "get into the game". I was reading about other people profits every day on twitter and I wanted in! I bought 100,000 shares of $ISBG at .0014. Unfortunately they never started the buy back and haven't released much news since. The importance of "cutting your losses" wasn't as ingrained in me then and I never sold. I figured, they said they were going to buy back some shares so they are going to do it. If I had done more research I would have seen how little cash they actually have. I have also now learned to follow the price action, wait for actual movement, not just rumor of something or what anyone else says.

A month and a half later I still have those shares. The price tanked down to .0003 at the lowest but in the last few days has slowly started to rise. Today it was up to .0007. The only reason I still have those shares is because as of last week the downside was only $20 (all I had left to lose). Thats a pretty small downside compared to any upside. I could be wrong. Maybe I should sell them Monday.

That same day I also bought $GEVO. I bought 100 shares at $1.40. They had just announced the first flights out of Seattle (?) on Alaska Airlines that were using their more environmentally friendly fuel. I figured this was just the beginning and they would start branching out to more flights and more airlines. Unfortunately I bought at the high of the day and the next day they announced they would be selling shares at $.40 to raise capitol. The price plummeted to $.40 and I didn't sell. I wasn't getting up every day for market open (I'm not a morning person) so I may have missed the announcement. 

I also bought into TPIV. They had what sounded like great news to me so I bought 200 shares at $.598. It wasn't until about 10 min after I bought that I saw the average volume on $TPIV was around 100,000 shares. The stock never really moved and I sold for a small loss a few weeks later. But I learned my lesson on volume!

Lessons

3 trades. 3 losses. Obviously I had a lot to learn. I decided I needed a mentor. I was debating between Tri Force Trader, Super Trader, and Tim Sykes. I liked what Tri Force Trader had to say about the Ichimoku cloud and the cloud seemed really straight forward to me. Clear entry and exit signals. It seemed like the way to go. The more I read about him and watched videos of him though I just thought "this kid is crazy smart" and I though he might be over my head. He was also pursuing other careers and i though "why would he want another career?!!?" 

I think Tim has a lot to teach but he is kinda known for shorting penny stocks and with my small account and no experience, shorting stocks right off the bat sounded way to dangerous to me. I want to incorporate shorting into my bag of tricks at some point but not right now. 

I decided on Super Trader as a mentor because he is more of a swing trader than a day trader and since I am working part time and can't always be in front of a screen, this seemed more my speed. I signed up for his Pro service and started watching all of his video lessons from the beginning. I figured he would be more into teaching in the beginning that he is after 500 video lessons. He did do more explaining and teaching in his earlier lessons. I watched about 50 lessons and then started skipping around looking for titles that interested me.

He mainly teaches investing in stocks that already have momentum and continue to close every day above the 4 day EMA. as long as the stock still meets his rules you keep it. If it breaks a rule, you sell. Easy enough. 

I bought TPCS after it went on a few day run because it met his requirements and had good volume. It also had positive EPS. A lot of the stocks I read about have negative earnings so this stock stuck out. It was on a run and it was actually a profitable company. However, it hasn't done much since I bought. Up a little, down a little, and for a week it continued to follow his rules until last Friday. It closed below the 4 day EMA so I guess i should sell on Monday, hopefully into a morning spike. The volume on this stock was a little low and like I said never did much; I will definitely remember this for the next stock I buy.

I haven't bought any stock in over a week and I have been getting up most mornings for market open. So far I'm only down ~$300, not horrible but I could have avoided most of those losses if i wasn't so eager to get into the "game".

So much to learn!

Last week I was feeling very overwhelmed. I was learning so many strategies from so many different people, I really didn't know what I was looking for anymore. Then last Thursday Tim Sykes and Tim Grittani gave a live webinar to talk about Tim Grittani passing the $3,000,000 mark. When Tim G. was talking about starting trading he also said that he was overwhelmed with different strategies and signals and he ended up simplifying, only trading 2 setups until he mastered those and then he added more. 

That was the exact advice I needed to hear. So my head is back in the game and I am still learning as much as I can but I am going to simplify. I haven't decided what setups I want to aim for yet but that's the goal for next week. 

Lessons for beginners

- I know how badly you want to jump in and start making money. Tim and his students make it look so easy! But if you jump in too soon (after studying 1 week) you will lose money! Wait. Study. and then study some more.

- Sign up for Twitter and follow Tim and other traders. I follow Tim, Tri Force Trader, Super Trader, Stocks to Trade, and Airplane Jane to name a few. 

- Learn everything! But try and figure out what ideas or strategies resonate with you and try to master those first. 

- Wait for the stock to actually move. Don't just buy because you think its going to move.

- Don't trade on rumors!

- Find a mentor