Hello everyone! I'm new to the forums and I am absolutely in love with stocks. I opened a custodial account with my mom on ETrade and since then I have been obsessing with checking the prices. So far I have 25 apple shares which I made $100 on but that was just luck. I have a few K to spend on other stocks but not sure on what yet. I plan on going to college for this so I figured I minds well get a head start. My dream job would be working at a big bank in NYC. My question is where can I learn how to start trading now? Is there a particular website or should I just learn by experience? Are these forums good for helping each other? Just wanted to introduce myself and thank everyone for their help!
I would focus on your education and getting into the best schools and network with connected friends. Get the job and let banks teach you what they know. Most orderflow and the reason behind it can only be seen by working behind the scenes. Major in math/statistics/programming, and try to learn quantitative techniques. Chris
Go to a university that has a sponsor trading room (you can use google to find them...there's about +47 of them) and that's sponsor by a "big bank". Wouldn't be a bad thing to be at a university that enters yearly university trading tournaments all over the world. Next, try to get an internship with a "big bank". You'll probably need to help from your guidance counselor. Simply, be patient and meet other traders, quants, professors, sponsors at your own school.
Read, read, and read more. You may want to start with this list: https://www.stocktrader.com/investing-books/ Or this one: http://www.liberatedstocktrader.com/top-20-stock-market-books-review/ Then start forming your own ideas and theories, and test them. Then start trading. As motif stated above, learn programming. That's the skill you'll need if you want to be competitive in the trading world.
This this this this this. Whatever you do, be careful putting allot of money at risk until you learn more about the markets and paper trade until at least you know how the market works internally and how your platform works.
You are sixteen, it's gonna take you about 10,000 hours of more study to finish school and get a top degree. You need to work like a dog. And like others have posted, you need to maintain your network of friends. There could be an economic recession on around the time you graduate and that is when you may need your friends the most to help find work in your chosen field. Otherwise, when times are tough, you are just another resume out of hundreds of others. If you want to be a speculative trader it's going to take about the same amount of hours to learn this business, but that's probably not what you want to do if your aim is to be trader at a big bank.