I have a couple of friends asking me how to start trading or do I have any tips for them to start trading. Well, I am not a pro, nor a trading coach. But, I can share some great resources that are available online, in the blogosphere.

First of all, my trades are based on technical analysis, which means I am reading charts and looking for trading opportunities and setups mostly from price charts. I am not a big fan of fundamental analysis, it is too tough for a slow man like me to understand.

So, here we go.

First, armed yourself with skills to involve in the market. Making phone calls to your broker, or getting ‘tips’ from your colleagues or uncles are not skill. Learn how to read a price chart, how to analyze the market technically or learn how to read financial reports and analyze the market fundamentally. Some nice blog posts are available on the web freely on this area.

1. Toni Hansen’s Trading lessons
2. Drawing Trend lines from Trader Mike
3. More on Trend lines from Trader Mike

Once the price charts are no stranger to you, it is time to move on. So we read charts, but how are we going to deal with market? To start trading, we need to have a setup. A setup is a specific condition/situation that market presents to you and gives you the chance to enter the market. As you might know I am a big dummy fan, all my trades are based on dummy setups. Some people live and breath with indicators for trading setups, nothing wrong, as long as it works for him. Here are some good resources:

1. How I trade, and analyzing charts from Trader-X . (The respected and mysterious trader’s site. He’d left blogsphere, but catch his blog before it is gone)
2. Finding the right set-up(s) from Trader-X
3. Chairman Maoxian’s trading for dummies (This is the best trading secret on the web, I really hate to share with anyone :-p)
4. Trade setups ( a library of technical setups from Trading-naked.com)
5. Strategies from Corey at Afraidtotrade.com
6. OONR7’s trading setup

Alright, we have setups, looks like we are ready to make million now. Nah. The next big thing in trading is about risk and money management. You can’t trade without money. The bottom line is to protect yourself (your capital I mean!) when having bad days. Trading is a probability game, you only have high probability trade but not sure-fire trade. No setup will give you 100% success rate. Face the fact! So, how much can you afford to lose? how many contracts or shares should you trade? Money management is essential for trading.

1. Accuracy Vs Risk/reward ratio from myself, Trader Gav 😉
2. How to be consistently profitable in stock market from Movethmarkets.com
3. Position sizing from Trader Mike
4. Starting out with basic from Dr.Van K Tharp
5. Expectancy is the next key from Dr. Van K Tharp
6. Expectancy from Trader Mike

Enough? No. … Now you should have known that trading is a serious subject, serious business. Ok, I will continue in part II, this post is just too long.. 🙂