Trading at 18?

Honestly, even with 20:1 leverage, that's only 20k and it'll be very hard for you to really do anything. Furthermore, one bad day could wipe you out.

Im not trying to make a million dollars or anything, I just want to do something with trading. I thought it could be a good learning experience.

You could open a practice account and put like $500,000 and manage it. I don't know how banks look at that but it would be great practice. I'm gonna be a freshman and I've been trading for a couple years now but I am going to look for a practice account so I can practice some new stuff without the risk of losing any real money.

The only way to make many money off of that 20K is to take huge amounts of risk which won't prove anything to a potential employer (other than you love risk).

I remember when I was in college, I had a small account (5K) and I thought I was awesome because I cashed out with just over 9K a year later. Over that summer I worked at an actual firm and realized that I was an idiot, and looking back on it now I realize that I was a huge idiot. I could have been wiped out (and then some) in a matter of hours with the margins I was trading with. Most of my positions were huge positions in one firm for short periods of time and praying that the "research" I had done was enough to get me by. It was 100% luck and it is not like I learned much.

save ur money................just demo accts till you can be consistently profitable,you need to learn trading and it takes a while, you gotta have a strategy, proper risk mn techniques, lol you cant just throw money in an acct and think you can beat the market lol.....otherwise ur just giving ur money away to the markets! AS SURE AS IM TYPING THIS RIGHT NOW, TRADING WITH NO EXPERIENCE YOU WILL LOSE........ I only speak from experience! save the 1k.....

Yea its definitely a bad idea, I had consistent gains in demo accounts (using overnight flipping, day trading, options and weekly long+short positions) for ~2 years during high school. I realized that all of it went down the toilet when my college tuition was at stake and my heart was beating out of control whenever I saw red in the P&L, I think i'll stick to chasing bb ibd for now.

How can you possibly compete with a Bloomberg machine? You won't even have access to the breadth of information that any real trader has. It's impossible to beat the market since you don't have necessary information that everyone else has. Do yourself a favor and save your cash.

Don't invest your money unless you can afford to lose it. If you are really adamant about making an investment, then I would say you should do some research to find some companies the market is undervaluing and take long positions in them. Your school definitely has online databases you can get equity research reports from and check and see if you do have a Bloomberg terminal in one of your libraries. No you won't be trading like a big swinging dick, but you have to play the hand that's dealt to you.

I'm somewhat surprised at all of the contrarian advice on here - what happened to the spirit of that classic Bondarb thread that basically said - If you don't put yourself on the line, you're never going to learn, so do a ton of research, and then get some experience? There was never any mention of not trading if you weren't already on the Street - didn't a good number of current BSDs get their start trading in college?

OK well, considering even with 20 to 1 leveraging you cannot start daytrading in the sense of the word, the SEC requires that you have $25,000 in equity to daytrade I would say save your money. If you are still serious about daytrading, look up the rules for it. There are completely seperate rules to daytrading, like the $25,000 minimum rule. Also, learn more about what type of daytrading you want to do, there are many different kinds. Also, I have friends that tried daytrading during school and the stress was unbearable. Not only did they lose a LOT of money (about $5,000 on average, or a ton to a poor college student) but they also had their GPA suffer because they were stressing about losing money. I would suggest reading all material you can come across on daytrading (if that is really want you want to do), using a great simulator to practice (something that takes into account that trading is not instantanous), and getting a great GPA so that you can mentor during the summer with an investor.

So in short, i think it is a bad idea for you to daytrade but I am not you. Learn the rules of daytrading, just do a quick google search. Practice it. Get good grades. Then try your luck when you have the money to lose.

One thing that I would recommend doing is looking at something like www.smartstocks.org . It's a paid subscription website that gives you an entry, stop, and target price for daily stock picks. They offer a free one week trial and explain all of their picks. Since the beginning of June they are up 33% which more than covers the fee. They answer all questions very quickly and I only have positive things to say so far. I'm doing the free trail while I get my money set up and then I plan on buying the subscription and hopefully learn how he picks them.

I'm not affiliated with the company at all, just a subscriber.

Did you even look at the link? I'm sorry if I so gravely offended you with this post. I agree that some of these services are scams, especially ones that pump and dump pennies. This one focuses on big board stocks and explains the reasons for investment, not just this one or that one. You also have to use your investment knowledge to determine if the position is right for you.

I dont need to look at the link.......im not offended, maybe you just dont know what these signal services are like. Theyre scam, all of them. Sure as shit, they will blow ur acct up if you follow them. The best signal service is ur own.....do your own homework when trading, its MUCH more rewarding in all aspects of the business. Im only speaking from experiences....ive been trading for some time now (about 4 years) so ive been through it all....signals dont work.

Bunch of risk-averse l wussies.

It's a $1000, me lord the kid has 70 years to live on this planet still.

I would say do it if you want to, you may get some good experience and stories to tell.