Developing basic trading knowledge/skills (I'm a complete novice)

I'm a 26 yr-old professional, doing corporate strategy for a F500. I'm a very smart guy in most respects, but know pretty much nothing about trading, and don't follow the markets consistently, thus I've never invested my money in anything but my company's IRA plan (so mostly a generic 401K plan, and some other pre-selected mutual funds).

I'm not necessarily looking for advice on how to break into trading on a professional level, more looking for suggestions on how to build a foundation of knowledge around trading/capital markets (mainly stocks and bonds, as I'm approaching this as a personal investor and not someone trying to become a professional trader).

For those of you who have been trading for a while, or even those who have recently started, how did you get your feet wet? Really just looking for some general advice on how to broaden my base, as I don't really even know where to begin.

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Best Response

Trading for 5 months now... Just turned 18 so will get my own broker account...

Buy books, dont learn online. Books are much cheaper. Alot of websites have huge conficts of interest. Don't buy into the "get rich fast" type of BS, obviously. I reccomend:

Trading for dummies to get started

More advanced: Technical analysis of the financial markets by Murray One up on wall street by lynch The intelligent investor by Graham

If you already know what broker you want to use, practice with their demo account and try their platforms. Get comfortable and confident with the markets, theyre already complicated enough.

Also, trading for dummies has a section about brokerage selection...

Ced

 

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