Should i start invest or not. %35 return with simulation

I've been using simulator and gained 37 so far, but i think that was just luck. I bought only 1 stock, google last couple month ago when it was 430. Now it's 5XX so that means i did a good job, didn't I?

When i decided to buy it, i looked at price trend cause the highest was 570 and i thought 430 was it's lowest, plus i believed google won't colaspe more than that. Was it the educated guess? Should I have to learn more or get my hands dirty with it now?

And is there any recommendations for online broker? I will get my gift 2k soon and want to invest with that..

 

It you can afford to gamble your money, give it a shot.

 

no more recommendations?

 

Only invest what you can afford to lose. I trade stocks and have quite a few that I'm looking at right now.

If you want to be successful at it never get emotionally attached to a stock, know when it's time to cut a loser. You should also learn how to better assess the value of a stock. It sounds like you bought google on a whim and just got lucky.

You need to dig into the financials of a company, to past performance, to future trends, to the latest news, to the economy, to the specific market, etc. There really is a lot of investigating that needs to be done before a stock is picked.

To answer your question if you should learn more or get your hands dirty, my answer would be that you do both. Get into the market with a small amount, and as you gain confidence and understanding of how it all works you can get in heavier. The best way to learn is to just do it. I suggest you find a stock trading forum, read books on it, and watch TV shows that have to do with trading stocks.

 

Thanks for your comments, I really appreciate it.
For me, I read many books, day trading, long term investment, bonds... But i have come in a conclusion that, the more you read, the more you know and the harder to make decisions.
Before i was just doing some research based on basic strategies but after i read those books by, i realized that it was hard to choose a stock. I ended up with giving up cause i afraid to loose.
I don't what more to add to this but, just want to share with you guys

 

I'ts totally different using actual money than using a simulator or "paper trading" as it's called.
Don't read too much, because as you said it can get very confusing.

My advice is to read a book on Technical Analysis Techniques and find one easy system to use.
Find a charting package or use Bigcharts.com
Simple support and resistance levels are enough to get your trading started. The biggest mistake 90% of traders make is not sticking to the rules of the trading style they are using.
"Plan the trade & trade the plan - always"
Don't play in the cheap pool (penny dreadfulls) stick with the midcap companies and you should be reasonably ok.

Here's a chart of a stock I'm in at the moment, it's for show only and I only post it to show the clear support levels, it's definitely not a recommendation.
It clearly shows the support level is .16, I bought in at that price. The next support level is .14. and my stop is at that level/price .14.
If it breaches that level then I am out of there. My target is around .23.

 

thanks, that's such a nice thoughts. I'll try to practice with small amount of money first. But in your example, what is the stock open price? How much changes portion should i play with? For ex. MSN change %2.4 and another XXX that changed only 0.07. It may be confused but anyway, take the large meal or small but lots?

 

I like dividend paying stocks. If you find some that are low in price since market went down they pay you dividend while you wait for them to go back up. taxes are lower for dividends and good companies pay them and increase them over the years. The site below has some you can buy directly from companies with no broker. If you want online broker i like scottrade because you can go to office they have 300 hundred of them. Link is on site also.

dividend paying stocks.

 

What? How could you like dividend paying stocks and Scottrade at the same time. When I used to have Scottrade, I was so frustrated because they did not offer DRIPs (dividend reinvestment plans). Therefore, I switched to Firstrade. Yes, unlike Scottrade, they don't have physical branches, but they are slightly cheaper. I would highly recommend Firstrade.

 

Yeah, as mentioned above, using real money changes the game. It's a lot different than paper trading. And the best advice I can give you is this:

When you see a profit, take the profit. Don't get greedy! It will be really easy to get that "deer in the headlights" feeling when a stock is doing very well, but nothing goes up forever. Nobody ever went broke taking thier profits while they had them.

Now, long term investing (for retirement) is different. If thats what you are doing, just keep adding money whenever you can and forget it. Don't worry about the markets.