[toasterwater]

I just recently started playing the stock market... okay, so by that i mean that i opened up an ameritrade account, and without knowing a whole lot about the process, ive started investing. I've read decent amount about it, but I honestly dont know exactly what I'm doing. I figured the best way to learn would be to jump in and experience it first hand.

I put $3000 into an ameritrade account, and i invested a little over 2k in General electric stock. I chose them because they are a company i suspect to be a good long term investment, and i figure they will be a good stable foundation for the more conservative side of my portfolio. The other thousand i plan on playing with. Yep, thats right, im going to treat it like monopoly money, and just try to figure out how to play "the game".

I have a simple hypothesis on short term trading. Basically, after looking at graph after graph, i have noticed that stock prices will go up, and they will go down. Simple conclusion. I also figure that a stock of low value, maybe less than $10 per share, has a greater potential for high percent gains than an already expensive stock. This is because if a $2 stock increases in value by $1, you make a 50% profit, but if a $20 stock increases in value by $1, you only make a 5% profit. Lastly, i have found that highly active stocks, stocks that trade alot of volume, tend to increase and decrease in value more rapidly than others, plus they are easier to buy and sell due to the high volume. Using these principals, i derive my hypothesis- Choose the lowest priced stocks off of the most active list, and invest in them, because they are bound to go up and down at a semi predictable rate (if youve ever looked at a graph of a stock of this description, youll notice its basically a zigzag line) just buy at the bottom of the zig, and sell at the top of the zag.

Now, Im sure that someone is reading this and thinking "this guys retarded"... well, maybe i am, and maybe im not, i guess ill find out soon enough. The cool thing is that with this Ameritrade account, I get 45 days of free trading. That means that any money i make off of a trade, no matter how small the amount, is profit. Ill play with this idea and hopefully develop a decent game plan by the time my 45 days are up. If anyone has any questions, comments, advice, etc., please post them. Im also willing to share what i learn, and i will try to keep you up to date as my experiment progresses.