Accumulated knowledge from blogs, people, magazines, etc. over the last year.

Most importantly

• Volume is the cause for price
• Breakouts have a bigger volume and need confirmation on the second day with more than average volume afterwards
• Volume and overlayed MA20 (because there are 20 trading days / month)
• keep it simple with charts: price and volume are the most important
• concentrate on current investments, not past or future ones
• only look at the daily chart, not 30 mins, 5 mins or anything. it makes you crazy
• breaking resistance needs a follow through day, i.e. another day up
• in a bull market a normal pullback from the highs is a 50% retracement
• always look at daily, weekly, monthly to spot resistance / support points
• Watch Volume on the daily chart to compare it better with other volumes on other days
• Read news and find trading ideas 6:00 - 7:30am (Europe), for sure before the trading day starts
• Always keep some cash for short term opportunities
• You don’t need to trade every day! You don’t need to trade every day!
• If a company publishes earnings and the stock doesn’t move much it might be that most people already own the stock. It could go down.
• Make sure you know who publishes the information, who’s behind the news
• Stay away from penny stocks
• Use a stock scanner the day before trading to find potential candidates for trading

Key economic indicators

(always check for the general market direction)

• Interest rate (price of money): if interest rates are low it’s good for the stock market
• Inflation: High inflation is bad for the economy. Deflation is bad as well. Most sectors will do badly
• GDP: steadily rising gdp is good for corporate earnings. 2 consecutive periods of falling gdp is called a recession
• unemployment rate
• consumer confidence (the less consumer confidence the less spending happens)
• us house prices
• Most important indicator: ISM Index (very good predictor of how the economy will be in 3 - 6 months): above 50 it is expanding, below 50 it is contracting)