Stock Trader - Methodology

Methodology

Stock speculators and investors usually need a stock broker such as a bank or a brokerage firm to access the stock market. Since the advent of Internet banking, an Internet connection is commonly used to manage positions. Using the Internet, specialized software, and a personal computer, stock speculators/investors make use of technical and fundamental analysis to help them in making decisions. They may use several information resources, some of which are strictly technical. Using the pivot points calculated from a previous day's trading, they attempt to predict the buy and sell points of the current day's trading session. These points give a cue to speculators, as to where prices will head for the day, prompting each speculator where to enter his trade, and where to exit. An added tool for the stock picker is the use of "stock screens". Stock screens allow the user to input specific parameters, based on technical and/or fundamental conditions, that he or she deems desirable. Primary benefit associated with stock screens is its ability to return a small group of stocks for further analysis, among tens of thousands, that fit the requirements requested. There is criticism on the validity of using these technical indicators in analysis, and many professional stock speculators do not use them. Many full-time stock speculators and stock investors, as well as most other people in finance, traditionally have a formal education and training in fields such as economics, finance, mathematics and computer science, which may be particularly relevant to this occupation – since stock trading is not an exact science, stock prices have in general a random or chaotic behaviour and there is no proven technique for trading stocks profitably, the degree of knowledge in those fields is ultimately neglectable.