It is NOT safe.

You need to ‘educate’ yourself, learning how the market works, how to do technical (and fundamental) analysis and then ensure you can emotionally deal with trading.
Knowing a lot does not make you a good trader if you can not cope with it psychologically/emotionally.

Do it gradually. Open an account, do a bit of trading, see how you go, then increase it if you get good results.

I use Tricom, but they may not be well placed for you. They have offices in various countries.

First, learn about the 50% retracement rule. This is the single most reliable and simple rule for a beginning trader. You may ignore every other “technical” or chart indicator when you are first starting out. You may learn about this by googling for it, or by finding a book.

Second, learn what to expect and what not to expect from the “advice” that you will find in your search to learn how the stock or commodities markets work. This “advice” will come in the form of fundamental analysis, news, websites, technical analysis, stock brokers, investment advisors. The best way to learn which things to pay attention to and which to ignore, is to read the book “WAll Street: The Other LAs Vegas.” It might sound like a cheesy title, but it’s a good book written by a dancer who started trading in stocks, and learned what to trust and what not to trust. He learned the hard way. Once he figured it out, he turned some 50 thousand dollars into two million.

Third, you will need to develop a trading plan. This will be primarily based on your 50% retracement. rule. To this you will add a method to control your losses. For beginning traders, the easiest way to do this is to learn how to use “stop losses.” So you will enter trades with the rule, you will let your profits run, and you will limit your losses.

Next, you will open an online account with a stock, currency or futures brokerage. It doesn’t matter which. Day trading is all the same. If you want to trade stocks, trade stocks. If you want to do currencies or futures, do those. The differences between them are as follows:

Stocks usually require several thousand dollars to trade. They tend to charge higher commissions and fees. With stock accounts you can usually buy a “little” more than how much cash you have. It’s called “margin.”

You can open up a currencies account with *very* little money. Like, $250. Currencies are highly “leveraged” trading. Meaning a little goes a long ways. It’s good and bad.

A futures account is for trading commodity futures, stuff like oil, sugar, coffee. Again, highly leveraged. You need a minimum of 10,000 to open up this one.

If you live in the US, here are the things to look for when you shop for a brokerage:

- If you’re going to trade STOCKS, look for a brokerage that is a member of the FINRA and SIPC. This means the company is “regulated” and you won’t have to worry about them stealing your money.

- If you’re going to trade CURRENCIES or FUTURES, make sure the company is a member of the National Futures Association (NFA).

Next, open up your account. If you open a currency or futures account, the cool thing is, you can “practice” trade with their demo accounts for as long as you need. This is very useful. I recommend doing it.

Finally, once you get used to trading, start learning about additional methods of risk control. Such things as option spreads are very useful.

Best Regards,

Yo Fujikawa
1-800-670-2683

First, you’re using Vantage Point to day trade, but they will tell you that Vantage Point is for position trading. Yes, they’re predicted high/low is very accurate (granted, major moves can be outside the range, but how often do you have a huge 1 day move?), but it only tells you the possible high/low, now what the trading pattern for the day will be.

One thing I could suggest is this: Use the Short Term/Medium Term Predictive averages (the pink and light blue lines, I have mine set on the bottom part of the chart) to get an idea of when prices could be changing direction. Also, when you switch from the 10 day or 5 day average to the predicted high/low, you’ll notice that the short/medium predictive lines will be different that from the 10/5 day chart. What I do is when the short predictive (light blue) line crosses the medium (pink) line on both the 5/10 day and predicted high/low chart, is when I get an indication markets will turn (and it’s very accurate).

When that happens, since you day trade, use your technicals on whatever time frame chart you’re using to take trade only in the direction of the crossover. For example, say you’re watching the S&P 500, the market is trending up and you notice that on the 5 or 10 day chart that the short term predictive has crossed below the medium term, and when you switch to the predicted high/low chart that the short has not crossed below the medium predictive, but is about to, wait till the short crosses below the medium predictive on the predicted high/low chart (that is short has crossed below medium on both 5/10 and predicted high/low chart). When that happens, use your technicals to time short entries, don’t go long. In other words, say you’re using a 5 minute chart. If the market is trending up, and you’re technicals give you a signal for a short, then take the short trade.

When the signals show the 5 minute chart starting to turn back up again, close your short, but do not go long, only enter again when you get a sell signal.

Trade in the direction of the larger trend. You should get less whipsaws and will be trading in the direction of the larger trend. When the short crosses above the medium predictive on both the 5/10 and predicted high/low chart, the only take long trades.

Hope that helps.

There is also an article written especially for novice traders, where a more advanced trader is writing about his experiences in forex-trading during one day. All these articles are for novices and beginners, but the very first link at the top of the list below is especially written for novices. On the home-page of the website, it will show the latest news on economies and forextrading and may help you while you trade.