Back Ground:

So I am completely new to trading, i have various retirement accounts but have never done anything like this before. I do have however an extensive knowledge of information technology spanning two decades. So for me it easier to pick up on new things / new software. Little did i know the surprise i was in store for. I am still fairly young enough to have easily 20 years working but who wants to do that, no one. I have a successful career, great family, and we had our first house built. Life is good but it can always be better. My goal may not be different than most people here, turn a little something in to a lot of something. We have multiple retirement accounts (401k, pension, ROTH, ETC) so we have diversified those to where they are fairly steady. However the problem I have is the rate at which we are getting returns. 10% on 100k is 10k, good year right. I want to be able to do that a month, or 20%, 30% etc. That is how we will build enough wealth to make going to a choice not a necessity. I don’t want to own rental properties, sell real state, or pick up technology contracts and outsource the labor. I want something that i am in control off, I can learn, and caught they next "one" that everyone talks about.

Goal:

Learn day trading over the next 5 to 10 years with a small expendable account, the goal is to meet various milestones over the course of the next five years.

1. 2000 to 10000  - Still under PDT rule - Year 1

2. 10000 to 30000 - still under PDT rule - year 2

3. 30000 to 100000 - Break out - PDT no longer applies - year 3

4. 100000 to 500000 - year 4

5. 500000+ - year 5+

Month 1:

Really hasnt been a month, more like three weeks. I started with doing research on how to get started. I read the book The intelligent investor, I am reading it a second time now that I know what the words mean a little more, taking notes :). 

During this time I was looking for any material I could on investing, warren buffet, youtube, yahoo finance, google. I have found that if it isnt on google or youtube it simply doesnt exist,, ( thats a joke but surprising close to the truth) I found ten books that warren buffet recommended and started with intelligent investor. This was one of the books that I believe tim read twice and took notes the second time. This is was lead me here, his story is what I am looking for. Now, the sceptic. I saw all the positive and negative views on Tim, taking the fact that he his millions prior to 2008. Does his strategy work and yes with enough shares it does work, look at the people here making profits.

After about a week, I opened three accounts. One was with TD Ameritrade, This gave me access to thinkorswim desktop software and paper trading. I opened an account with e-trade, which by the way was the only one of the three that actually call me to see if I had any questions. The last one was sure trader and let me tell you my first impression of them was so negative I immediately went and opened an e-trade account and started funding it.

Meanwhile I have been reading, signed up for tim's pennystocking silver to get access to all the videos. I think I feel like im starting to get the hang but I know I have a long way to go before doing actual trading. 

3 month plan, the market right now seems wonky and I can’t see any patterns. But what do i know, remember I know nothing at this point. So I will keep learning everything i can get my hands on while learning the thinkorswim platform and the e-trade pro platform. You should know that etrade does NOT offer paper trading.

 

Meanwhile I will be building my etrade account up to around 3000. After 90 days of paper trading i should be ready to start using real money. The money is there in the event the big thing comes but for right we are going to play it safe. I have to get the foundation laid, learn how to filter stocks, learn how to read charts, and learn how to detect what the catalyst for stocks up and down. I have to learn the terminology, which is priority number 1 right now.

 

Ohh just a side note, the paper side of thinkorswim. The data feed is delayed, but the charts and times are in real time. The level II feed is delayed 20 minutes. I had to get a trail of equityfeeds before i notice the LevelII feed on the paper side on thinkorswim was out sync with the charts. No wonder I kept losing 2k a day in paper trades :).

 

On this blog over the 90 days I will post the paper trades i find, the reasoning I selected, whether they went up or down, and what the goal is. I will start with only using 3k since that is what I plan on using moving forward. I will track it here to see if i can or cant grow it. Then of course when I do it for real, it will be tied in the broker account just like everything else. I am going to keep posting here just as a way to document the process and reference later. Please leave commits or recommendations.