I have some stock investments. Disclaimer: I also don't have any idea what the hell is going on, and nothing in this message should be taken as advice that you should follow simply because I said something. Look at it like this: I"m a monkey in an orange space suit, talking to Marvin the Martian's head. K?
But I'll say this: If you want to be a day trader, then that is an almost totally different discipline than an investor - and there's a whole grey area between day trader and investor. It depends on what you want to accomplish.
Investors make a bet on a stock , and typically it's a long term investment you just leave alone for the most part. To get started is typically easier. You can start off by investing in high risk funds, for example. You get the benefit in a volatile market of the fund manager's experience. I say this because you can invest small amounts.
Day traders on the other hand, typically invest very short term, say starting literally at 9 AM, by making some purchases, selling and buying throughout the day based on their strategy, and ideally at the end of the day having nothing in the market, and a profit in the account. You get the benefit of the excitement of the hunt. They and almost every other type of short term trader usually have a big disadvantage.
That is that generally the trades that make the money in stocks are made in milliseconds or even nanoseconds after the conditions that triggered it are met. If you don't have the kind of resources available to you to match that, then don't do this with anything more than some beer & pizza money. It will melt faster than an ice-cream on a hot summer day in Houston.
What I discovered is that human nature doesn't allow you to react without emotion, and you need to approach this with a pure logical mind. We don't come equipped with one. But computers do, so people have invented some interesting algorithms to tell them when to buy, and sell. Unfortunately, the programs are usually very very good at telling you when to buy something, and very very bad at telling you when it's time to sell. Instead, on that end, they're very good at telling you when it's already too late. I should know, I wrote one of these algorithms.
Books: are useless, except maybe for the bare mechanics of how the stock market works. Mostly books are written for the author's benefit, and not the reader's benefit. You know how to make a million, right? You either start off with a two million investment, and invest it in the stock market until you have only 1 million left, or write a NY Times best selling book on how to make money.
The other thing though, something that might give you some tools is a course. You can find them on places like Udemy. They have published prices like 199.00 and stuff, but at these places, everything is always on sale at anything between 85 and 95% off. You get one added benefit that books don't give you. That is there is a live rating of the course from it's students. You want the highest rated course, you can get for 10.99-14.99. EDIT: Some of the courses you can get at places like this are colllege level, and many are written by boni fide experts.
OR on the other hand, what's wrong with the race track? For the money, you might even be better off going to a BINGO hall, or buying lottery tickets over investing.
