You can join some schools who provide courses, even only last for few days, but they teach people about the basics of the stock market and online commodity trading.

It is very important for you to understand everything, at least some basics about commodity trading before you get started and learn how to place or how to control your orders in the commodity market.

This involves learning how to use the latest software. Studying how professionals make money through buying and selling will provide you with good examples of how you need to conduct yourself even though the trades you will be doing will likely be on a much smaller scale.

You can control the major losses by learning which commodity trading transactions involve the most risk. It doesn’t matter even if you find the russian stock market seemed to be more lucrative than the one in the US for example.

A bit of education will help you to reliably determine which investments are likely to be profitable and which should be avoided due to risk factors. It is possible to utilize different types of contracts at the same time to increase your leverage. Such as dow index.

This makes the trading more complicated, but when done correctly it makes it more profitable and less risky. You must have discipline and move cautiously with an established plan and solid knowledge of the market and the software you are using if you hope to do well in the online commodity trading market.

Many people find that online commodity trading is very lucrative and make it become a full time career. So if you put the time learning the market and carefully make a decision, you may find yourself want to make the online commodity trading become a full time career, too.

Thank you to the internet since it makes the online commodity trading become much more flexible, so that you can start slow and increase the volume whenever you feel comfortable.

A Century of historical data shows that the stocks market always rises over the long run eventhough a lot of us learned over the past year and half that there’re never any guarantees with the market.

That expression, “the long term” is the real key to online stocks trading, by the way. So, you’ll actually make money if you hold on to a stock as long as you’re patient. It is usually the people betting on short term gains that get badly burned in the market.

If you’re serious about online stocks trading, you really need to have a budget first. Simply put, the money you can afford to lose is the money you can afford to invest in the stock market. If you need it to pay a bill next month, then it should be in the bank where it is safe.

That way, if you are never forced to pull money out of the market, then you will rarely lose any. Because if a stock goes down, all you have to do is hold on to it and wait. Unless the company has totally imploded, the stock will usually recover in time.

Create an account with a reputable online broker when you want to get started with online stock trading. Pick one that is well known as they will have the most secure websites. This is hugely important as you will be sharing your personal information and your banking and credit card information to set up the account and you certainly don’t want to risk identity theft. The stock market is risky enough!

You can start looking and picking stocks when you have a brokerage website that you like. Buy small amounts of cheap stocks to start if you’re just starting out with online stocks trading. This will allow you to spread your risk around and if any of your choices turns out to be a mistake it will not wipe out your whole portfolio.

Online stocks trade should fun and by investing small amounts you can get involved with more companies which increases the rate at which you will learn about the market. My advice is buy a few reliable stocks and then take a little more risk with those that are volatile. This gives you a chance of hitting it big while preventing you from losing it all.

So much of Google’s value was intellectual property as opposed to real property and the market was not used to the idea that internet companies could be so valuable.

Long story short, there is absolutely no reason to debate about this anymore, since Google stock price is 5 times its initial value and 5 years later the company has the market value of $175 billion dollars.

Do you know that Google stock prices rose to over $100 on their very first day hit the market and then doubled within 3 months after that.

Now that analyst debate on different things on Google company, they debate on a matter of how much more it will grow and how quickly. Many investors in the Australian stock market also join in this debate.

Obviously the early growth was unrealistic and unsustainable, but over the past few years the company has settled into a more traditional growth pattern with exception of the recession which has been detrimental to the entire tech sector and the entire marketplace.

No stock comes with a guarantee, but investors have shown that they are confident that Google is a solid, reliable company that is not likely to significantly lose value, at least not relative to the market as a whole.

You can find Google’s up to date stock price at any time by searching using company’s symbol “GOOG”. Not only Goog, there you will also see Nasdaq futures.

Note that Google has two types of stocks, that is Common and Preferred. Usually Preferred stock prices are higher since the holders are paid dividends before they are distributed to all the common stock holders. However, both of them have voting rights.

It’s actually quite simple. The futures market is just a bet on where an index will close at a future date in time. It is no different than saying ” I think GE will be 5 points higher in 3 months”. Now imagine thousands or people, or even hundreds of thousands all betting on where GE will be in 3 months. Not tomorrow, the time is 3 months from now.

This aggregate valuation call would be considered a futures market. It may be higher or lower than where GE is now, but you also have to consider the people have 3 months to be right - that is a lot of time. Time always has a value, because the more time you give yourself to be right, the easier that bet is. The market puts this time value into the price of the futures, each day that goes by a fraction of that is taken out. This 3 month time in this example is a fixed time, it does not scroll forward. So if the bet is a close of at least X price by july 31st, 2 weeks from now the date to be right is the same but the time left is less.

If this still seems confusing, think about this example:  Every day an analyst says “The market will fall 300 points today."  If that happens in 1 day, he gets a bonus of $40,000.00.  The more days you give him to be right, eventually, even just by random chance, he will be right.The time increase you might give a person to be right would actually decay the value of the prediction being right.If the guy is given 1 month to be right, that is only worth $10,000.00.It the time to be right is 3 months, that is only worth $1000.00.00 and so forth, this is a type of time decay.

This basic concept is then carried over to the stock indexes. Traders and investors place bets based on current and anticipated information and research for what they think the value of the index wil be in the future. One key to always remember - futures and cash are equal on expiration as the futures are converted into cash value. So if the S&P 500 index is at 1400 on expiration, so will the futures contract trade to this price. Because of this, that difference can be arbitraged between the two (cash and futures) since they trade separately. Anyone can make a bet on the futures market without even touching the cash index or stocks. In just the same way, I can buy a large basket of stocks in the index without touching the futures market. This give and take causes the 2 of them to fluctuate independently.

If the futures push to high relative to stocks (the spread widens), there is free money since at expiration the value is equal. The idea is to sell the futures and buy the basket of stocks that comprise the index and lock in the free money if held until expiration. There are whole other program trades that simply day trade stocks vs futures all day long based on the premium to cash being too high or too low.  By selling the futures, you have agreed in principal to sell the basket of stocks comprising the index at that futures price. If the futures are 1430 and the cash is 1400, and the time value is 20, theoreticaly the futures should be at 1420. At 1430, I can sell the futures, then buy the stocks and lock in 10 points for free. Doing it in real time is not this easy, but the basic underlying concept is.  Anyone who wants to learn to trade needs to understand how the futures market works.

First off, you really need to treat  day trading as a profession. This means act like its a real job and your only way to make money. You need a dedicated computer to trading with at least 2 monitors. Older computers are fine for some things, but do not try to use an older computer that is underpowered for trading. I can assure you that computer will fall behind of the task. Nothing is worse than lagging data (meaning the market is at place C but your computer is showing its at place A still) and failed network connections. Trading is super data intensive, make sure you have a computer with at least the following specs:

1. A minimum dual core chip, ideally you want a quad core chip. Each core on the chip can run a separate application, and this really lessens the chance the computer will stall out. Make sure the processor you choose has a decent amount of L2 cache also - this increases speed as well. If you dont know what this is, ask a local computer nerd, they will help you.

2. A minimum of 2gb of memory, the more the better, and the faster the better. If you want more than 4gb you will have to use a 64 bit operating system. Before you take this step, make sure whatever software you are using is fully compatible. You should be able to get by with 2-4gb fine. The faster the memory the better, but no need to really pay up for special memory.

3. An add on graphics card from Nvidia OR AMD. Make sure the card can handle at least 2 monitors. You do not need a high end gaming card, you should be able to get something decent for about 100-150 bucks easy. Do not use thebuilt in graphics on the motherboard - they are really cheaply made and are underpowered. Trading is extremely graphics intensive - think about real time charting, indicators, order entry, bid ask in real time etc - it adds up.

You only need this on the main computer you will be trading on and doing your charting. You want 1 dedicated screen for order entry and 1 screen for charting. If you have any other computers that are older, those are totally fine for surfing the net, getting news, IM chat and other stuff. I would always keep your trading computer as uncluttered with add on applications as possible. You do not want to be in the unfortunate predicament of the computer crashing or locking up during a trade.

You need a dedicated work area that will serve as your trading area and workplace. It needs to be setup no different than a desk in a normal working environment - phone, lights, supplies, computer, printer etc. Remember to succeed, you really have to treat learning trading as a real business, not some kind of hobby. A hobby is fine, but you cannot expect to become an expert unless you treat it seriously. When you are in a trade or watching a setup to enter, don't let outside junk distract you. This means chatting on the phone to friends, watching tv shows, and doing other things while “kind of watching” the market. If this type of behavior would not be acceptible in a normal office, it will not cut it for trading either.

Once the office is setup, it is time to get serious about how learning the in's and out's of the market. The internet and free blogs are a great source of information, but you should not expect to learn everything online. Go to amazon.com.com or Traders Galleria and search for the term “stock charts”. You want a beginning book and an advanced book on charting. In order to learn about trading, you have to figure out the mechanics of price movement and become and expert at charting. This will take some time, its not easy. But as you get more proficient, it becomes much easier to add new ideas and concepts because you have the background framework to understand them.

Expect learning charts to take about a year to get good, but in a month or 2 you can get a good start. Again, do not fall into the trap of thinking “if I throw some money at this, someone will show me secrets and shortcuts”. If you don't have the foundation to understand what is going on, no amount of shortcuts will fix that since you dont understand the underpinnings of how stuff works. One word of caution - do not attend any seminars until you have at least mastered basic charting - your money and time will be wasted. IF you think you know enough to tackle the advanced book, then it is probably time to attend a seminar to learn more. Again here there is no substitute for experience. Every day you have to plan time to watch the markets live, even if its just for an hour or two - ideally for the whole day if possible.

Static charts are fine to go over when the market is closed, but you really need to watch it live as well. If your time is impacted because you have another full time job and cannot watch the market here is a secret: Get some screen capture video software (records your screen to video) and an external usb hard drive, probably 500gb will do. Set up a real time chart of the market and a few stocks on your screen before you leave for work. Set up the recording software to save to the external usb hard drive. You can set up a macro (there are free programs out there that can do this, search Google) if you are not home when the market opens. Set i to record at least an hour of video of the market open and any charts you have open. Then when you get home at night, you can play this back in real time and work on watching for chart patterns. If this does not appeal to you, some of the brokerage firms or data vendors have market replay that can replay parts of the prior day for you.

One last thing I have not touched on yet - charting software. There are tons of them out there. I have my own preferences I like, but that hardly matters. You need to find what you are comfortable with. Some programs are very complicated, some are simple to use, and yet others will let you code custom indicators and trading systems. If the beginning , I would suggest everyone go with simple. What good is having 500 things you have no clue what they do or how they work?? All that can do is to lead to confusion and add a bunch of things that are too complicated. Just make sure its a fully robust charting package – meaning all charts are live, you can put tick charts AND minute based charts up (not delayed data, live data) AND its not web based. Web based means the program is running in a browser, rather than running as a separate executable. For the most part, you always want a standalone, executable program - they are far faster and speed is money. If your trading platform is integrated with the charts that is totally fine, just make sure its not web based order entry either. It is too slow in general to be of any use. Web based is totally fine for buy and hold, longer term investing. Winning at trading is about time, even 5 seconds delay can cost you 50c or more per share in lost profit if the market is moving fast. That cost is real and can result in a winner turning into a loser.

While this was not a tutorial on how to trade, I tried to touch on a few subjects often overlooked when people are trying to learn to trade. They overlook these because they either cost money (charting software, real time data, computers) or they think they take too much time so lets find a way to skip this or that part.

As in every business I know, there are some fixed, monthly costs that are a part of doing business. Data costs and chart program costs are one of many costs you will incur as a trader. Often you can get them minimized or waived if you are active, but for probably the first year expect to pay for them as you are learning.