Stock Tool #3: Marketocracy

the purpose of this stock tools series is to guide new investors on learning about the market. i messed up big time by putting options trading as stock tool #1 considering its a pretty difficult concept to understand. so today, im going back to the basics. from stock tool #2, you learned how to properly read a chart. now its time to get a feel for trading. i made the mistake of jumping into the market with real cash before i was ready, and as a result, i made a lot of stupid trades in march and april and endangered my chances of ever becoming a FYM. trading with real money is really emotional and stressful at first (esp when youre a poor college student taking risks to get rich), so its good to get used to seeing your stocks value fluctuate from day to day. therefore, its important to be disciplined when it comes with money and risk management. a virtual trading account is a good way to do this. if you are a new investor, i really encourage you to practice on a marketocracy account before you open a real brokerage account. i started this marketocracy virutal trading account last month to practice trading in small/midcap growth stocks while diversifying enough to reduce volatility and risk. so far i'm doing pretty well. i've been consistently destroying the s&p and the other indices so far and my fund is up 8.5% since my june20 inception date. the top rankers in the 1-month time frame are pulling 18% returns in 30 days! i have no idea how theyre doing it. my goal is to eventually get ranked in the m100 and m10 competitions (you win real money), but that's gonna be extremely hard.