What is your plan to learn stock trading? As a Certified Financial Technical Analyst with the International Federation of Technical Analysts, with 20 years of investing experience, I believe I have the right plan for you.
The Best Way to Learn Stock Trading
Learning stock trading and investing takes a lot of work. There are no short-cuts, but you can teach yourself by learning from the wealth of books, videos, podcasts, and training courses available. It would help if you treated you’re investing seriously and did not take undue risks with your capital; there are no get-rich-quick schemes.
1. Read the Best Stock Trading Books
With thousands of books to read, where do you start? Check out our Top 20 Best Stock Market Investing Books Review. It also includes the top 14 books that PRO Market Technical Analysts study to qualify for IFTA (International Federation of Technical Analysts) or C.M.T. (Chartered Market Technician) Industry recognized certifications.
Here you will find a hand-picked selection of simply the best finance and investing books ever written, including a detailed review and ratings based on the books’ content, practicality, and readability.
Top 5 Best Stock Market Books Summary
- The Little Book that Still Beats the Market: Best for long-term investors
- How to Make Money in Stocks: Best for growth investing
- One Up On Wall Street: Great for Stock Selection
- The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: Simple Investing Strategy
- Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets: The Bible of Technical Analysis
We have it covered from all-time bestsellers to academic studies. Alternatively, jump to our PRO Technical Analysis Top 14 Books.
2. Watch Great Finance & Wall Street Movies
If you sit in front of a computer all day and read books in bed, what do you do in your downtime during the evening? Why not watch a financial thriller, stock market movie, or a true story.
Sit back with your feet up and convince your partner to watch a film, perhaps the “Wolf of Wall Street,” “Boiler Room,” or my favorite, “Inside Job.” Read our Top 20 Best Stock Market & Financial Movies Review to find a great film to watch, guaranteed not to bore you.
Learn, be astounded, and also disgusted at the behavior of the money-hungry elites. I guarantee you will be shocked by the true stories and even entertained by Hollywood.
Top 5 Best Stock Market Movies Summary
- The Big Short (2015): Financial Crisis – Stock Market Movie
- The Wolf of Wall Street (2013): True Story – Stock Market Movie
- Rogue Trader (1999): Stock Trading Movie – True Story
- Margin Call (2011): Stock Trading Fiction
- Boiler Room (2000): Pump & Dump Fiction
3. Learn How to Build Stock Trading Knowledge
This video will guide you through the entire process to Learn Stock Market Trading.
4. Listen to Stock Trading Audiobooks & Podcasts
Bored of reading? Have too much energy to sit down and watch a stock trading movie. Why not listen to a great book while commuting or gardening or out walking the dog.
Our Top 20 Best Stock Market & Finance Audio Books Review has some cracking listens, such as the highly-rated “Flash Boys” by Michael Lewis or “The Quants” by Scott Patterson. Fill your day with learning while not being chained to your desk.
Listen to a Stock Market Podcast – The Liberated Stock Trader provides useful lessons via our Learn Stock Market Trading Podcast Series – search for Liberated Stock Trader on your smartphone.
5. Access Our 248 Trading Lessons
Everyone wants something for FREE. So here it is.
Liberated Stock Trader has a massive Free Training Course – “The Trading Academy” with 100’s of lessons and videos.
Our Free Trading Courses Include
- Course 101 – Introduction to Investing
- Course 102 – Stock Market Investing
- Course 103 – Technical Analysis
6. Get Low-Cost Professional Stock Market Education
Alternatives to Free Courses include courses either in person in a seminar setting or online training.
Often premium courses will include video lessons and email support. Going for a premium course will typically help you learn faster and have much higher quality content, so you can save time and effort by getting the best first.
Liberated Stock Trader offers the “PRO Stock Trader Training” to enable you to gain the knowledge and confidence you need; it includes:
Try Our Pro Stock Marketing Investing Training
7. Get The Best Free Stock Charting Tools
They may not have all the bells and whistles compared to their “Pay For” competitors, but they are suitable for beginners and will not put a dent in your wallet (or purse).
Please read our review of the 10 Best Free Stock Charting Services on the Web. Please spend some time playing with them and getting a picture of what you need before selecting a premium package.
- TradingView: Best Free Stock Charts & Community
- Stock Rover: Best Free Stock Analysis & Research Tool
- TC2000: Best Free Charts for Powerful Technical Analysis Scanning
- StockCharts: Best for Advanced Charts & Experts Analysis
- Yahoo Finance: Good Free Charts + Broker Integration
8. Get the Best Stock Trading Software
You are now progressing your knowledge and experience in the market and realize that you need key features for your stock trading analysis. Features such as Back-testing, compelling charts, specific indicators, real-time data, and streaming news. But which packages are the best for you?
We sorted through the many high-quality (and low-quality) Stock Analysis Software vendors to bring you our in-depth review of the Top 10 Stock Market Analysis Software Programs. It’s the best review on the Web (but I would say that, wouldn’t I)
If you are not so interested in robust stock chart analysis and are more driven towards stock screening (filtering companies by fundamentals like P E Ratio, Earnings per Share, or Debt to Equity), then check out our Stock Screener Review.
Our Picks for Best Premium Stock Market Software
- Best Stock Trading Platform Overall: TradingView
- Best Stock Analysis Software for Investors: Stock Rover
- Best AI Stock Prediction Software & Automated Stock Trading: Trade Ideas
- Best Trading Platform Community: TradingView
- Best Stock Chart Analysis Software: MetaStock
9. Find a Great Commission Free Stock Broker
Do you live in the past or the future? In the past, when access to the stock market was limited to a Stock Broker, who would call you on the phone and convince you that the latest hot stock was worth investing in, and you would believe him. (see the film Boiler Room in this Movie list)
The future is the world we live in now, whereby you can research thousands of stocks, instantly see news and earnings, see the past performance of a company, then execute your trades online for a minimal cost. As a Liberated Stock Trader, you realize that you need to control your own decisions. Choosing a broker means selecting those that minimize cost and enable good market access with excellent customer service and a reasonably low minimum account balance.
Read our Best Online Stock Brokers Review, which also highlights the best stock brokers for online stock trading for beginners. The review winner was Firstrade, a first-class U.S.A. broker that recently moved to $0 commission fees, yes, which means there are zero commissions on trades for market participants.
Our Firstrade and Interactive Brokers reviews also highlight that they are also excellent for active traders, meaning those that trade often and hold stocks only for the short term. Also, if you want to trade Foreign Exchange, read our Best U.S.A. Forex Brokers Review.
Our favorite six brokers are evaluated in detail in our In-Depth Broker Analysis. If you are interested in trading penny stocks, check out our Best Penny Stocks Brokers Review.
If you live outside the U.S.A. but want to trade in the low-cost U.S. markets, read our Guide to U.S. Investing for non-residents.
Advisory Brokers
Make no mistake; advisory brokers make money when you execute a trade. This means they will always be recommending that you sell a particular stock and buy another one. They make most of their money on the trade costs and not on the profit because the transaction cost is guaranteed, and the future profit of a particular investment is not.
Your best interests are irrelevant to them. Make your own decisions and minimize your costs with a discount broker. There are no recommendations for further reading here.
10. Prepare Your Trading Strategy
- How will you approach the stock market?
- What will you invest in?
- When will you invest & why?
You need to form a consolidated stock trading strategy blueprint.
There certainly is a lot to consider when building out your investing strategy. There are core questions: should you use a day trading strategy versus a buy and hold strategy. Is Value investing like Warren Buffet for you, or is the more time and nerve intensive swing trading more your style.
What is certain is that you will need to spot and avoid stock market crashes and establish your trading rules based on your stock trading style. Also, advanced traders will want to ensure their system is back-tested, meaning it has worked in the past. Finally, if you are trading the earnings announcements or your stocks are susceptible to news-based price swings, you may want to choose a real-time, high-quality news provider.
11. Learn to Avoid Stock Market Crashes
Ensure you have a strategy to avoid the next stock market crash.
A stock market crash is an unfortunate and historically inevitable part of trading, as are tsunamis to the natural world. Just like tsunamis, stock market crashes devastate those involved.
Prepare yourself for the next market crash by understanding the triggers and warnings that can be seen through technical analysis.
“How to avoid the next stock market crash” is the latest publication from Liberated Stock Trader; this book will help you protect your investments.
Published Feature in Stocks & Commodities Magazine
12. Establish Stock Trading Rules
What chart indicators will you use? Under what conditions will you buy a stock? When will you sell a stock? Why did you buy the stock, and are those reasons still valid? So many questions, and here are some answers.
These are all known as trade rules. If you establish your criteria for buying, holding, and selling a stock before buying it, it can help take the emotion out of a trade. Read 10 Steps to a professional stock market system. Emotions are your worst enemy; you must treat your investment decisions with a dose of logic, not a slice of gut feel. This is when back-testing comes to the rescue.
13. Learn Stock System Backtesting
You may understand your reasons for a particular trade, but over the long term, does your hypothesis make money?
An untested hypothesis is not worth the paper (or screen) it is written on.
This is what is called back-testing. An example of back-testing is the Stock Market Crash Detector. This system is focused on trying to predict a stock market crash. There are numerous elements: stock price fluctuations & price versus specific indicators. While system back-testing is time-consuming, it helps you understand which of the many indicators, such as Relative Strength Index (RSI), Balance of Power (B.O.P.), Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD), actually work in a real-world environment in the past.
While past performance is no indicator of future performance, you can see statistically over thousands of trades what has worked and has not worked. If you want back-testing – read our Top 10 Stock Market Software Review and look at the section Systems & Back-Testing Score to find a suitable product.
14. Select a Real-time Trading News Service
“Roll Up, Roll Up, Read All About It”
If you want to stay in touch with Macro or Micro Economic Events, you will need a good news source. Trading the news is a strategy some people adopt. There are many good news sources for you to look at, including Reuters, Bloomberg & Investors Business Daily. However, if you want real-time streaming news and innovative market insight, look at our review-winning Benzinga Pro News Service.
If you trade the news, you will want news delivered in real-time, and that might cost.
A Quick Summary of the Most Reliable Market News Services & Apps
- Benzinga Pro: Best real-time financial markets live news feed for traders
- MetaStock Refinitiv: Best real-time global & US financial news by Reuters
- Bloomberg: Best financial news sources to the Bloomberg Terminal, but expensive
- MarketWatch: Best free financial news website from the Dow Jones Network
- Wall Street Journal: Best for digital & print stock market business news
15. Choose an Investment Vehicle
Why does Wall Street call them vehicles? Well, perhaps they want it to sound complicated, or maybe it is a reference to the transportation of your money to another destination. But when you think about it, Vehicle is a good analogy. Stock Investments can be seen as a car; some stocks are Lamborghini’s (fast and exciting yet inefficient), while others are a Toyota Prius (practical, not pretty but efficient and safe).
Binary Options & Contracts for Difference are like riding a fast motorbike – a great rush, requiring vast amounts of concentration and ultimately risky.
Exchange-Traded Funds (ETF’s) and index funds are like buses; they are cheap, reliable, and ultimately get you to where you want to go without any effort on your part. The ETF bus is an excellent place to be. You never have to worry about beating the market; you are always performing at the market, with minimum effort and minimum tax implications.
The book Unshakable by Tony Robbins lays out this argument beautifully, as does “The Little Book of Common Sense Investing” by John C. Bogle.
Stock Options are fairly complex calculations based on time and price; perhaps it could be called a Segway, although I may be taking the analogy too far now.
Trading Stocks vs. ETFs
If you pick the right stocks, your returns can be excellent. But choosing the best at the right time can be extremely challenging.
What about Index Tracking Exchange Traded Funds (ETF’s)? What are they? How are do they compare?
Read the Pros and Cons of Stocks versus ETF’s here and learn more about mutual funds.
Dividends are also a key benefit of investing in company stock. Please find out more about dividend investing in our Dividend Investing Secrets.
Dividends are a great way to secure a reliable fixed-income revenue stream. Our in-depth analysis of the Dividend Kings and Dividend Aristocrats will give you tremendous insight into where to place your investments.
Trading Stock Options
Options were designed as risk protection, but they can be used for profiting greatly. Providing you focus intensely on strategy and execution. There are two books in our Top 20 Stock Market Investing Books Review focused on learning Stock Options, “Getting Started In Options” by Michael C. Thomsett & “The Bible of Options Strategies” by Guy Cohen. Both I consider compulsory reading before you enter the fray.
In addition to these books, read our Top 10 tips for options success.
Trading in Binary Options or C.F.D.’s
Both Binary Options and Contracts for difference are strictly for advanced investors and involve elevated levels of risk. If you want to take your money for a ride on the Ducati Panigale Superbike, this dangerous and risky path is for you.
Be careful here, and don’t blow up your future investment pot. Apportion only a small percentage of your investment pot to Forex and C.F.D. Trading.
Both C.F.D.’s and Binary options are not permitted for U.S. investors.
16. Execute Your Trading Plan
Investing is a business, not a hobby.
Continual improvement and adaptation is the key to success. All of these factors are covered in our Liberated Stock Trader PRO Training.
17. Analyze Stock Market Direction
The direction of the market will overall dictate the course of your individual investment.
That is a “FACT.” Although some companies are so large, like Facebook, Intel, Apple & Microsoft, their direction might influence the market’s direction, at least for a short period.
When there is a market collapse, all stocks fall, even the good ones. When there is a rampant bull market, even the worst stocks rise.
So, what is the lesson?
You can use DOW Theory to assess market direction using the major indices. Dow Theory is discussed in depth in the PRO training. You can even use Ichimoku Cloud Theory to try to predict market direction.
18. Analyze Your System’s Performance
So you have a system, and it works. It is always good practice to check, backtest, and continually try to improve it. But make sure that a change to your system is an improvement and does not increase risk and reduce reward.
Stock backtesting is a process used to test if a set of technical or fundamental criteria for stock selection has resulted in profitable trades in the past. A good backtesting system will report executed trades, the trade duration, the win/loss ratio, and the drawdown and compounded return.
For example, if your hypothesis is a stock with a positive RSI number, increasing volume, and an increase in earnings will increase in stock price, then a stock backtest will prove if the strategy has worked in the past. The logic here is that if the strategy worked in the past, it might work in the future.
19. Building Wealth & Compound
A Buy & Hold investor is a long-term investor who wants to accumulate assets and income over a 10 to 40-year time frame, with the minimum effort. In recent times, Buy & Hold has become unfashionable.
The fact is that Buy & Hold investors always win over the long-term.
There has never been a 20 year period since 1945 where a Buy & Hold investor has not made significant gains.
But you are guaranteed to win only if investing in a developed stock market index tracking fund (ITF/ETF), like the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJ20), the S&P 500, or even the higher-performing Nasdaq-100.
This is covered in more depth in the PRO Training.
20. Enjoy Life
Who am I to tell you how to enjoy life – no one that’s who.
How you enjoy life is all down to you. Money is not everything; wealth is a matter of perspective.
You are rich if you have a family that loves you, a dog that loves you, a partner you have a connection with, or even if you have contentment in your heart.
I wish for you to be healthy, wealthy, and wise.
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"I have been researching and investing in stocks for 20 years! I now manage all my stock investments using Stock Rover." Barry D. Moore - Founder: LiberatedStockTrader.com
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Learn Stock Trading Summary
Learning stock trading and investing takes a lot of work. There are no shortcuts; you can teach yourself by learning from the wealth of books, videos, podcasts, and training courses available. You must treat you’re investing seriously and not take undue risks with your capital; there are no get-rich-quick schemes.
Now it’s over to you. Did you like this article? Do you have feedback? What do you think? Please scroll down and leave a comment to let me know.
Thank you Barry for this beautiful article. I enjoy reading this. I appreciate your thoughts and ideas. The videos are very helpful to make them easy to understand to the viewers. Great job.
the best stock thing ever ,, i even took a stilo and start writing someowhere something ,, everything perfect and i appreciate it
Please am interested in learning stock trading, kindly walk me through the processes to get started. Is it all free learning?
Hi Fred, the process is above, just hover over the big image at the top and you will see hints and tips pop up. Most of it is free, yes.
thanks
I hope you won’t take this as too harsh but I think if you’re planning on trading then you’re likely to lose money. Most people should not be trading at all. You’re competing against people who know what they’re doing because they do it day in and day out for a job. You’re much safer to buy a global equities index fund instead.