Has anyone taken one of these Stock Trading Seminars. I recently rolled over an IRA and now I'm being deluged with offers for these classes. And they are not cheap either. If anyone has had any experience with these, I'd like to hear what your opinion of them is. Thanks in advance.

 

Been trading stocks since '96, made a fair amount of money doing it, but not until after I lost a fair amount starting out. The big question is how much you're setting aside to trade (hopefully not all of it), how risk-tolerant you are, and whether you're prepared to do this part time, or pursue this as a full-time profession. If you want to do it full-time, it's going to take an unbelievable amount of time...and money...to get it right. The rewards can be stunning, but to play in this sandbox you have to play against pro's that can move $10's of millions on a moments notice.

As far as the classes themselves- the only two I've come across that are really good are run by Hank Camp (S&P futures) and Larry Macmillan. Larry has an excellent website with lots of free newbie info. Hank Camp is stupefyingly expensive- both for classes and a daily service he provides, but he's also the absolute, very best there is. Most of his clients are institutional traders, which will give you an idea of the cost, and caliber of the training.

All that being said, trading is a lonely profession...and not something to be done on a part-time basis. For part-timers, the Clearstation site is as good as it gets. the Nasdaq board is mostly newbies, but there's good info. The SPY board (S&P spiders) has some pro's on the board. You'll find a few on and off-line friends of mine there.

The flip side of this is investing- which truthfully I've made a lot more money at. The Motley Fool is an excellent site for beginning investors that want to take control of their own investments- I'd highly recommend it.

edit: another "must do" is to start watching James Cramer's show on CNBC, "Mad Money," 6-7 ET. Cramer's a lunatic...but he's a rich lunatic, and used to run the type of hedge fund small investors find themselves up against when they trade. Sooo...like him or not, you need to get to know, and understand him and his almost manic personality.

 

I'm a pretty bad source of information on this, as I've never invested in a stock in my life, but I do like to read about it. I'd say, for the price of these classes, I bet you could buy 5 or 6 books and get all of the information you need, and have plenty left over.

There are a lot of different methods of investing, and whether to be aggressive or not, and how to tell when to be that way or not, and how to get a general idea of the health of the market and how to read indicators and how to choose between stocks, money funds or things like real estate.

Sorry...that was awful grammar, but you get the jist. I'd say, wait for some more opinions, and to hear from someone who may have taken the class. Just remember, that it may not cover what 5 or 6 teachers (authors) can in 100-400 pages.

 

Very good info already . Just remember when starting out , one needs to only put in the market what they can live without. In other words, if the money you put in the market is lost , make sure that loss would not put you in financial troubles. Some people starting out call it "play money". I did not have enough play money , so I had to get out, and luckily I did just before the tech crash of late 90's . I cant imagine with the volatility and unpredictabilty of the market now, getting back in to the buy /sell scene, I dont have the stomach for it anymore. Long range investments ?, yes, day trading ? no. jmo

 

Great, another %^!@ing day trader.

 

Yeah, and they all have great hopes of making a fortune and think they are going to beat the DT's on the floor of WS . Scratch off tickets carry the same odds I would think,

 

Thank you all for the feed-back. Please keep them comming.

 

I will add one thing- anyone who traded through the crash of 2000-2003 and still has their trading money intact today is pretty darned good.

 

I rolled over an IRA and made the mistake of trusting a "name brand" financial advisor. They did an inititial asset allocation and put me in class "B" mutual funds (the worst kind) and never talked to me again. Beating the averages in the stock market is much harder than these hucksters make it sound.

I am currently using these people, www.investtalk.com for advice and what I have learned there has worked for me, but does require a certain degree of knowlege and effort. Basically it comes down to using both fundamental (earnings, growth, etc.) and technical (moving averages, volumes, etc.) analysis together.

Jim