If you’re looking to learn stock trading, it’s important to realize it takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a lot of studying and learning from your mistakes. Only the strong survive in the trading world, so give yourself the time you deserve. When we began our journeys here at the Bullish Bears to learn stock trading, we weren’t happy with what we found in the industry. The Bullish Bears decided to start a community with the priority of helping you first, not lining our pockets. We had always kept in mind what we were searching for when we were beginners, and the industry severely lacked it.
Chart by TradingView.
From learning stock trading for beginners to the advanced, it’s all here for you in our free stock trading courses. You’ll learn the basics, candlesticks, and patterns along with technical analysis, all the way up to advanced options strategies and day trading. You’ll be armed with the knowledge to trade in any market conditions. You can make your own trading decisions without the help of a guru or mentor. But you will make many friends who ultimately will be here for you to keep things positive and allow you to flourish in an environment where you can succeed.
This is the type of community we wished we had when we started. Unfortunately, it didn’t exist for us then, but it does exist for all of us now.
Navigating the stock market can be difficult because there are a lot of terms and trading concepts to learn. This page has a lot of our top ‘how to’ guides. Also, if there’s an article you want us to write or add here then feel free to contact us and let us know what topic you’d like to learn about. Make sure to do a search on our website first to see if we’ve already written about it.
How Do I Learn Stock Trading?
There are two schools of thought when you learn stock trading as a beginner. That’s the investing approach vs. the trading approach. Many people are familiar with investing and building wealth. That’s how we build our retirement funds. Things like mutual funds and 401ks are important to have.
Many times we have an investment portfolio through the companies we work for. Other times we take matters into our own hands and start our investment accounts. We often have an investment broker or financial adviser who handles those needs for us.
What a trader does is much different, though. It’s very hands-on, and there are multiple strategies they may use to be successful. If you don’t learn stock trading in the proper ways, then it becomes incredibly risky. However, with proper risk management and discipline, trading can be very profitable if done right.
The Bullish Bears community offers a trading service to our community members. Trading is our primary focus. We aren’t financial advisers and don’t tell our members where to invest their money. We teach you to read charts and recommend you use certain tools to make decisions, but ultimately, don’t play games when it comes to investing. Stick to back-tested and proven practices, or contact a trusted professional advisor.
Commodities (Futures)
The commodities sector is a very popular trading and investing sector. The most popular commodities are gold, silver, oil, energy, and natural gas. Commodities and commodity futures are very popular among both traders and investors.
What is the commodity sector? It is primarily stocks or futures that deal with goods. These “goods” could be raw or partly refined materials whose value mainly reflects the costs of searching, acquiring, or producing them for the market. Other examples of commodities are corn, beef, grains, cotton, and other minerals like uranium. So, whether you’re a trader or investor, it’s still critical to know how to chart a stock before entering any trade.
Volatility
Stock scanners hunt for volume and volatility with in stocks, and traders are hunters of volatility. Scanners will save you a lot of time by doing lots of research. Again, start with free scanners, then work your way up to scanners like Trade Ideas or Black Box Stocks when you have the budget available.
TrendSpider is hands down the most incredible automated charting platform in the industry. They do all the heavy lifting of drawing trend lines and mapping out support and resistance for you. Mapping out support and resistance is the key to becoming a successful trader, and TrendSpider is the innovator in making this process much easier. Read our TrendSpider Review.
Stocks move many times based on breaking news, and having a reliable breaking news service can be a game-changer in trading. Benzinga Pro is our favorite news wire service.
Stock news hits the newswires before it hits the scanners. Scanners hunt for volatility (stock volume), so newswires can help you get a trader’s edge and a potential position before the herd comes in. If you want to learn more, check out our Benzinga Pro Review.
Marijuana Stocks
Pot stocks are among the most popular yet misunderstood sectors in the trading world. Many newbie traders get started trading pot stocks. However, they don’t have the proper mindset. Many newbie traders hear from other chat services or pump-and-dump sites that pot stocks are “going to the moon.” This has been going on for years. Many new traders get suckered into these pump-and-dump schemes and then lose their hard-earned money. They get caught up in the “get rich quick” mentality and then wonder what happened.
Pot stocks are the epitome of pump and dumps. However, you can make some serious money while “trading” them. Are some pot stocks good investments long term? Sure, but they are also hard to find. Make sure to do your proper research first before investing in them.
If you’re looking to “trade” pot stocks, you’ve got the right mentality. Once you’ve mastered support and resistance, you can make some serious money trading them both long and short. Again, some pot stocks are good investments long term. Just make sure that you do your due diligence researching them.
Bitcoin
Ahhh…the good ole world of crypto. Crypto, aka Bitcoin, is a hot-button topic that gets people going. Just the mention of this word sets emotions into high gear. So…we are going to keep this topic short and sweet. Like any stock…no one in the world can predict what a stock or sector will do long-term. Can crypto become the best thing since sliced bread? Sure! Can it become one of the greatest pumps and dumps of all time? Yes.
Can you make a lot of money trading crypto? Yes! But…as you can see from the charts…a ton of people have lost their life savings “investing long-term” from buying at the top of the pump. We are always trying to do our best to protect our members. When purchasing stocks in hot-button sectors, it’s important to do your proper fundamental and technical research, just like you would in any stock.
Crypto and pot stocks are really important sectors to be aware of. They are a day trader’s dream because of their volatility but a new investor’s nightmare if they don’t know support and resistance.
Again, we are a trading company and not financial advisers. So, as traders, we say to trade these sectors but do your due diligence if you’re looking to invest in the long term. The best way to learn stock trading is to study and practice a lot until you feel comfortable trading with real money.
Brokers
TradeStation, TD Ameritrade, and Interactive Brokers are good brokers if you’re a casual day trader. If you’re going to be aggressive as a day trader and have the funds, then LightSpeed, SpeedTrader, or Centerpoint Securities. Also, check out the CMEG group if you’re looking to day trade. They allow you to day trade, their fees are low, and there’s no PDT rule.
If you’re looking to buy shares of a stock or trade options, ThinkorSwim is solid. Their fees are a bit higher; however, if you make smart trades, they are worth it. If you are going to be a casual, long-term trader, then TradeStation, TD Ameritrade, and Fidelity are solid brokers to use.
Resources
Reading is really important to your growth as a trader. Having the proper mindset and knowing how to overcome the emotions of trading will be one of the most important lessons. Learning technical analysis and candlesticks is also very important, but that comes second to knowing how to control your emotions when trading.
Take trading seriously and invest in yourself. Study and put the time in that trading deserves. Like in college…you don’t get a degree in your first semester. Trading is the same way. It takes many traders several months, if not one year+, to become comfortable and profitable, so go easy on yourself if it takes time to overcome the learning curves with trading. It’s a normal part of the process when you learn stock trading.
Learn Stock Trading in Our Community
We teach how to “trade” stocks, options, and futures in our trading rooms. That means we teach support and resistance, charting, order entry and implementation, and the psychology behind trading. We also provide a community of support for help along the trading journey. Our live streams are the best way to learn stock trading because it’s real-time, and you can ask questions and see what we are thinking and the WHY behind trading. This makes for an invaluable educational experience as a trader.
Again, we say it repeatedly, but we will continue to repeat it; we are not a stock-pumping service and don’t call out entries and exits on low float, easy-to-manipulate trades. We think it is morally and ethically wrong to use a trade room to pump a position and make you look like a rock star. We teach our community members how to become self-sufficient traders. Our live trading streams help with how to learn stock market trading. So, if you’re looking to learn stock trading and are willing to put in the effort, then our community will be a potentially great fit for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Take trading courses on your trading style
- Read books on your trading strategy
- Start paper trading
- Treat your virtual account like a real account
- Keep tight stop losses
- Learn from other like-minded traders in trade rooms
- Get a financial advisor
- Start investing in your 401k or IRA
- Invest your spare change with a company like Acorns or Stash
- Take basic stock trading courses
- Save money to put into a brokerage account
- Look into ETFs or trading large-cap options
- Practice paper trading first
- Slowly start trading with real money
- The amount of money that you need to buy stocks when trading differs based upon trading style
- You can start trading with $100 – $1,000 if you are looking to start small and slowly grow an account
- Options traders should shoot to have around $2,500-$5,000 to get started
- Day traders require a minimum balance of $25,000 to avoid the pattern day trading (pdt rule)
- If you are an active trade and want to use your account as leverage to trade then it’s helpful to have at least $25,000
