If you are learning to trade the stock market, our best advice for you is threefold.

First

The stock market is a risky place to invest, more so when you aren’t sure what you are doing. There are many stories out there from traders who suffered losses, sold their stocks, and after being emotionally burned, find out later that the very stock they bailed on changed direction and reached record highs.

This will not happen to every stock obviously, but all stocks will go up, and all stocks will go down. If you quit after your first loss, you are depriving yourself of the opportunity for real success.

Second

On a similar note, you need to practice trading virtually or even on paper before going to the market with actual dollars. This will give you a feel for how the market changes and flows and how stocks behave.

There are resources available to help you with this, but the primary way to practice is virtually, and the secondary way to practice trading is with a historical replay tool.

Finally

Third best piece of advice we have for you today is to ignore almost everyone. People will feed you information and opinions on stocks and the market which can lead to an informational overload and in turn complicate your decision-making process.

News channels and experts will hype their best guesses all day long, but in the end, their opposing opinions on the status of the market or any stock within it will only cloud your instinct and judgment. Keep trading simple and cut out the clutter and noise around you.

Tools and Resources

By now you understand the key players in the stock market, you understand that it’s not complicated and that it’s even probable that you’ll make money there. You also have our best advice to get started trading, so now it is time to give you some helpful tools and resources.

Brokers

TradeSmart University does not get paid to endorse any broker and the following is a list of some of the brokers we do like and use.

• Think or Swim (www.thinkorswim.com)
• Ally (www.ally.com)
• TradeStation (www.tradestation.com)
• Questrade - for our Canadian audience (www.questrade.com)

Charting Software

One of your primary jobs as a trader is to analyze your trades. You need a good charting software program to do so. There are free options out there, but you get what you pay for with those. Brokers offer mediocre charting software, so we wanted to give you some better options.

• Motive Wave (www.motivewave.com) - runs on a Mac
• eSignal (www.esignal.com) - great but expensive
• TradeStation (www.tradestation.com) - requires a large account
• Free Stock Charts (www.freestockcharts.com)
• Trading View (www.tradingview.com)

Training

Take the time and get some training. Here at TSU, we have over 600 training videos available on-demand and are here to answer your questions about trading.

Virtual Trading Resources

Virtual trading is your key to real, hands-on learning and understanding the stock market. It’s one of the best tools available to modern traders. The following virtual trading options are our suggested starting places.

Hopefully, you found this information helpful, and this has given you a basic understanding of the stock market, how it works, and how you can get started trading. Next step is to setup a brokerage account with virtual trading and keep learning! Plus, we are here to help, just reach out to us at info@tradesmartu.com with any questions and inquiries you have.