Stock Trading Picks

What is a stock trade anyway?

If you’re one of the thousands of people who have money in any type of account for retirement then you can consider yourself a participant in the Stock market. This all happens without your involvement in stock trading picks. But have you pondered about the functionality of how this interesting market works? Imagine being at a regular auction where items such as cars and antiques are being bided away, in the stock market think of shares of public companies being bid away.

To make a less confusing analogy, think about the role of an auctioneer. The auctioneer’s role is to get the highest and best price for each product. Well, the stock exchanges around the globe kinda operate in the same fashion. The auctioneer role is called a Market Maker. In a stock sale, there is no stable, set price for stocks, but instead, setting the price is the role of the Market Maker. The more you know about your stock trading picks the better your chances are of getting into or out of a stock trade with a profit.

The price will fluctuate continually, because the buyers and sellers will bid on the price of the stock going up or down. As you know when you see a stock price go up, it means that the buy price of a stock has gone up. This is vice versa when a stock decreases in value.

Now I’m sure you’ve seen how the floor of the New York Stock Exchange looks. You know, the floor where tons of stark raving mad folks, scream numbers and look at monitors and make trades all day. The trading day starts at 9:30 in the morning Eastern Time, and stops at 4:00 in the afternoon Easter Time. Events in business news, market forecasts, world events, and scandals thrown in between, can dictate how much trading volume a market will have in a given day. This only makes it more difficult to make the right stock trading picks from day to day.

The last couple of paragraphs have mentioned all of the particulars of two major markets, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the lesser known American Stock Exchange. But there is a third market! It is called NASDAQ.

Now what makes NASDAQ quite unique from the other two, is that this market is controlled by computers. Despite the technological advances of this stock market, NASDAQ still has the conventional bidding water of NYSE and American Stock Exchange. The buyers and sellers have their own areas to buy and sell stock, and bid through a quote system called Level II.

The great thing about stock trading is that in order to be successful with trading stocks, you don’t have to be in the trading pits, bidding like a madman. Not at all! You can now use the very own computer in your house, and make your own stock trading picks and make your trades. Many different internet based brokerages are out there, and have plenty of materials to get you started and on your way to becoming a great stock trader!