I couldn’t believe my ears when a friend of mine told me how much money he’d made trading stocks online. He told me he had only been trading online for about a year and only a few hours day, but he had already made enough to buy himself a brand new fishing boat—a gorgeous 30 foot Boston Whaler. My friend, Mark, told me he’d take me out some time. He must have seen the envy in my eyes when he said he’d teach me a few things about trading stocks online if I wanted. I enthusiastically agreed.
The first thing Mark said was that I had to do my homework. Many people get into trading stocks online thinking they’re going to make millions and end up losing their kids’ college funds. “You have to remember,” he said, “these aren’t just numbers on a screen, this is real money. And this is risky business.” I nodded my head and took what he said to heart. I have three young children and I would never think of gambling with their futures.
After a few weeks of studying the markets, I went back to Mark and told him I was ready to start trading stocks online. He said the first thing I should do was select a small portfolio of stocks that I was interested in and watch them every day to see how they trade. It was best to only select three or four stocks so I could devote all of my attention to them. Next he said I should find an online broker. Online brokers offer clients rock bottom commission charges—sometimes as low as 7 dollars a trade—so you don’t get killed with charges. I opened an online trading account with a name I knew—Ameritrade—and started slow.
While I did lose a few hundred dollars on my first few trades, after about a week I started to get the hang of it. I thought I could see patterns in the way my stocks traded, and I bought and sold on this hunch. After a month, I had made nearly a thousand dollar trading stocks online and the next month was even better than that. I only trade for a few hours a day and I’m not about to quit my job and become a day trader or anything crazy like that. But I have found that trading stocks online is an interesting and lucrative hobby.
