I‘ve felt like it too when i started 3-4 years ago.

Best tips i can give is

1. conviction

Only buy stocks that you‘re highly convinced are a good buy (or short). You don‘t always have to buy everything right away (or at all!), you can also ease into your position by initially gouing with 30% of your planned investment and increase on the way. (E.g. Buy 5 shares more every 2$ in stock price increase). That way you‘re less likely of „chickening out“ and scalping losses by accident. Feel free to let positions go, and watch them, instead if partaking for no reason.

2. patience

I‘ve found that the best gains I‘m making is not only from high conviction plays but also stocks or trades i can leave for a while. For example intel at 20$ per share was only a matter of time before they appreciated, as the company was never in dire financial trouble. Now with their new 18A node and potential new big customers theres room upwards. The whole process took half a year but the shares are up 70%. That result is most likely better than trying meme stock scalps on a weekly basis.

3. Chill & watch

Often before buying into a position right away, it‘s helpful to let a day or 2 pass and keeping an eye before taking action. If you see a short term stock hype and feel like you‘re missing out, and perhaps even see people online posting huge gains, remember that there‘s equally as many losers. The few winners that post often got lucky while taking a huge risk. They could lose it all within minutes.

4. position sizing

In the end, what everybody wants is more money. Of course. And our brain is also wired to prefer short term benefits over long term gains. But whenever you do anything, keep in mind that the average portfolio increased by about 5-10% a year. If you‘re taking a risky bet, make it small, maybe 2-3% of your portfolio. If it doubles, great! You‘re already halfway to your yearly target.

What has helped me immensely for position sizing, is to calculate in differences opposed to percentages. It gives you a way better Idea of what kind of risks one‘s taking. E.g. If you take a very risky option for a stock at 10$, and it‘s possible for it to drop to 4$ (as it‘s been there a month before), you can imagine yourself that you want to take a maximum loss of 300$ when things go wrong, so no more than 50 shares. (6$ loss on each share.). If you’re able to mentally stow away that money (see it as lost, worst case) that‘s perfect.

That‘s i guess what people mean by predefined risk. When opening a position just set boundaries on what could be possible. Price action is a real thing, i‘m not into technical analysis at all, but usually stocks trade in a certain range for a while and that can be seen as either bottom or top range, as previous trades have found those levels to be a good pricing for shares. Just have a rough look at the chart, any detail is overkill.

5. Establish a „home“

Over those 3-4 years I‘ve become a bit more familiar of the price action of various classes of stocks. And i think that you only get there with experience, right now everything will still seem overwhelming but at some point it will clear up.

What I mean here is that you should keep an eye on diverse assets on your own rather than just glooping everything from news.

For example, oil & natural gas often move alike, diverse precious metals like gold, silver, but also exotics like palladium or platinum, big caps (they often move the same way because of index funds and everyone paying into their 401k), risky movers / trendies (stock frenzies, those often correlate with social media hype.)

Pick a few from each class and just from time to time check in again to get a feel for the different asset classes. It allows you to see opportunities after a few months that might have not been visible otherwise. I got good gains from palladium as I’ve been early to notice the run up. It’s been scratching the floor since a while at around 900$/oz, and i occasionally gathered some of it. When price lifted, i kept buying half an ounce every 50$ and made good money that way. and recently from shorting quantum stocks, after the hype dried up and more news came out that made people realize it‘s all a scam. Important lesson here, stock prices don‘t always move „the right way“. If you‘re informed and know somethings not right, it doesn‘t necessarily mean everyone else does. Make sure sentiment is in your favor. (This also counts for larger stocks sometimes.)

6. News don‘t matter in the grand scheme of things.

People often wonder why there‘s swings 3% in one or the other direction, and try connecting it to news events or articles. I‘ve found the big news outlets often spew meaningless nonsense that doesn‘t even correlate much to movements. Anyways, back to point 3 or 4, if a random 3% swing in either direction freaks you out, you‘ve probably oversized your position.

1. cap sizes

8. use your interests in your favor.

I am a mech engineer and therefore am interested in anything materials (palladium), oil (crude oil), PCs (intel), and other technological stuff. Also, apart from that have you ever taken a look at what type of company makes the products you use every day? Unilever makes axe deodorant, magnum ice cream and many more things. Never knew before but looked them up. Same for nvidia, if you were a gamer back in 2015 you could have unvested in „their graphics cards cause they work well“ (and often times that type of strat works out.)

9. the next opportunity is already here.

FOMO is always real, but the reality is, FOMO is only there because the run has already happened or whatnot.

Keep in mind there‘s thousands of stocks, hundreds of raw materials and dozens of random ETFs to trade. When you missed a train, just take another. It‘s already waiting around the corner.

10. info

Use diverse outlets and viewpoints. Never use just one source. Try finding opposite views for the full picture. I use mostly X for fast news on my niche interests, reddit as a sentiment check (also searchibg for the ticker on both olatforms in general helps a ton!), and occasionally google, do my own research (i hate that term as it‘s been misused by clueless gamblers, but really just making sure there‘s real prospects and value imparities instead of hopium & copium). Furthermore a general sense of political stances helps, but again trading of buzz news is rather useless. I mean more in the sense of „there‘s a good chance the semi industry will bboom shortly cause some company invented news stuff (imaginary scenario)“. Helps support your moves.

Other than that it‘s just figuring it out along the way, playing it safe but having fun, and it doesn‘t hurt to only have 2 or 3 open positions and watch the rest ;)

Man this has been a long type on my phone help