Blog Post

This is the question I get asked in my e-mail hundreds of times. First off, this is not one of those get rich quick schemes. It takes discipline, patience, and ALOT of research. I am just a college student who is still learning every day. I started with only $50, which is the minimum to open a trading account. These 3 steps will get you on your way to start learning about stocks and in turn bring in the benjamins. I will try to make this as easy as possible for your newbies out there.

1.) Click HERE to go to Zecco to open a brokerage account. It's easy. You even get a free book! Zecco is by far the best online broker designed for the person that wants to start out small or even for the broke ass college student. I have done pricing research with every broker out there online and I have not found one for cheaper. With such a little amount to start with, you want your price that these online brokers charge you for each trade to be the lowest. With Zecco, its only $4.50 a trade, that's it. $4.50 to buy a stock and $4.50 to sell a stock. No matter how cheap the price of the stock is, and no matter how little the amount of shares you buy is, it is still $4.50 per trade. Most of the brokers out there( Think or Swim, Trade King, Scottrade, Speed Trader) among many others, have fees like per share fees in which they charge you if you buy stocks lower than a couple bucks a share. I personally mainly trade with stocks as low as .0001 per share. I challenge anyone to find a better online stock broker. Trust me, you wont.
Choose your nickname, personal info, etc. All you need is $50 or more to start. Add funds to your account. This can take about 3 business days for them to confirm your bank account to allow you to deposit funds.

2.) This is very important. You need to find a good real-time chart watching program. This is what you are going to use to monitor your stocks during trading hours (9:30-4:00 est). Zecco does have a good program called Quotestream II. They do charge anywhere from $20-$50 a month for this program depending on the features you go with. You don't have to go crazy on all features. All you really need is the basic. I have used this program and works pretty good. I have tried so many programs. I ended up staying with E-trades Power Etrade Pro program. Many of the professional traders use this program. It is really simple and customizable. They charge about $100 a month for this, however when I signed up for it they never charged me. I still have not been charged for this program. I must have slipped through the cracks or something...shhhh. It is all personal preference and you will be able to decide for yourself what is more comfortable for you to use. Keep in mind that most stock quote websites are usually delayed 15 to 20 minutes. Even the big dogs like Yahoo finance that claim to have real-time stock quotes are true with only the main exchanges like the NYSE and the NASDAQ. OTCBB and Pink sheets(stocks that have ticker symbols ending with OB or PK) exchanges are the main stocks I trade with and you will not find these real-time quotes for free.

3.) After you have that all set up. All you have to do now is Buy low and Sell high and that's where the money comes gushing in. Yeah right, I wish it were that easy. You need to first do your research, do your research, and do some more research. If you want to gamble and just buy whatever stock you read about in chat rooms and message boards and just hope that it goes up, then will eventually lose all your money, guaranteed. The one thing you need to realize is that these companies that I play are very sketchy, and sleazy companies, well most of them anyways. Once you understand that and don't let your emotions get in the way of your trading, you will begin to make money. Market hype is the key driver to making stocks go up. The more popular a stock gets, usually the volume skyrockets. But just as fast as stocks go up, they crash down even faster. Be careful and always use limit orders and especially use stop sells when you are not watching your stock. You will get burned if you do not use stop sells. To find out more information on all the different ways to buy and sell stock, learn different terms and to learn about the stock market, go to Investopedia.com a great learning resource.

With these 3 steps, you should be well on your way to bringing in sizable profits. Remember to have patience with your trades. Don't force a trade. Look for high volume stocks, the higher the volume, the more liquid the stock is.

I hope this helps guys. God luck trading!!!!
Any Questions???

---I am not a professional financial advisor. I am a college student who is still learning about the finance industry. Above is strictly my own opinion. Please make your own decisions when making an investment.