Introduction

I have been trading online since 1999. In hindsight that was a very good year to start because I was trading primarily Oil & Gas stocks and they were on a fire sale. The price of oil had dropped down to $16 dollars that January. 

On a trip home from New Mexico to Louisiana we stopped for gas near Amarillo and to my surprise a small bottle of water cost more than a gallon of gas! Having previously worked in the oilfield I knew this situation would not last very long. 

For the next six months I read as much as possible about online trading and researched brokers. The first stock I bought was WEL @ .38 cents a share. Sold it at .75 and felt pretty good about myself. The very next trade I bought RRC at 1.50 which turned out to be the all time low for that stock. Last year it traded over $70 per share but I sold long ago just under 10.

Those examples were partly beginners luck but they also represent many hours of research and set the foundation for my future trading. All has not been rosy however because I almost lost my shirt trading Emini futures. Now I'm back to trading strictly stocks and will post a couple of my holdings shortly.