My Education begins with Penny Stocks... Need Help

[Georgebymn]

Hi,

I'm a 34 year old single father. I would like to start investing in Penny Stocks. I have been doing some preliminary research and before you tell me the pitfalls of doing this, i already know some of them e.g. pump & dump.
I'm a Poker Player (risk taker). I understand the general risk involved with these stocks especially for a beginner like me. I'm a beginner to investing period but i still want to begin with Penny stocks.
Please be advised that i am in the beginning stages of research and learning so as to mitigate my mistakes (just started reading Penny Stocks for Dummies). I'll never be perfect but im hungry enough to try and be plus I enjoy taking smart calculated risks for the benefit of teaching others. I want to be able to send the elevator back down so to speak with the right information.
3 Questions to start:

1. How much time should i spending doing research before opening up an account
2. I can only afford to start with $500 ( that i can only afford to lose also). Is this too little an amount?
3.What other starter books do you recommend?

Thank you for your response in advance.

[gigeokulgbuim]

Never for one minute believe that someone KNOWS what a stock is going to do. All you can do with these is learn price action, learn good execution (entry/exit) and keep your losses small.

If I only had 500 to trade with this is what I would do. I would stalk the live news feed on Thinkorswim like a cheetah....biding my time and watching for a breaking story, announcement, FDA approval, contract awarded something that makes a stock price (in the .50 to 5$ range) start to move and I would jump in if I could catch it before it's overextended and then back out as soon as it started to look weak. You will be able to do this 3 times per week without being flagged as pattern day trader....but it's enough because there aren't that many of these to really jump on. In this way I would look to build my account and skill up enough to take more speculative plays where you might be able to hold longer or risk more in losses.

But I would...and still do...do a lot of simulator trading to build the skills. Just like pro ball players or golfers or whatever practice 10x's or 50x's more than they actually play.

[GolyCaraci]

Wow! someone who actually makes sense and keeps it real. Thank you. I will use the TDA similator while reading and get as much knowledge as possible. Can i contact you via email? Keep you a breast of my process?

[Gregorymili]

Thank you. I appreciate you "sending the elevator back down" I plan on doing the same once I'm successful at this.

[HaroldPt]

Yea, AC's good people. I don't want to say he's always right, nobody is, or can be, but he is always honest and willing to help. And in this, that's better than someone flat out handing you gold bars. Good luck man!

Anymore questions, post em in this forum as well and you can get lots of perspective cause there's usually more than one and its about learning a lot of different views.