Good Trading Strategy?

Hey everyone! I am new to this forum and this is my first post. I am 19 years old and really would like to learn a lot more about trading. I have read plenty of book and have done some trading on my dad's account as well. Well my question today is that I have opened up my own trading account. I will be starting off with $500 dollars and that is why I picked tradeking as my discount brokerage site. Their commission fee is only 4.95 per trade. So can anyone give me some ideas on what kind of trades I should be doing? Penny stocks? Blue chip companies? I am a student in college and on my free times when I am not in class or sometimes even in class I am usually on Marketwatch trading game. How would you guys start investing with only $500 dollars to start out with?

I'm just a beginner as well but so far this is my personal take on getting started. Stay away from penny stocks. A lot of people have the attitude that they only have a little money so they need to throw it on something cheap and hope for huge gains to try and get ahead. But seriously you have better odds at many of the table games in Vegas. There are probably some viable strategies for a mini account of 500$ but you will be pretty limited. Don't be disappointed if all you get are some good lessons. Buying stocks is capital intensive therefore hard to spread around your risk much. It will be easy to get taken out on one or two bad plays. If it were me I would keep saving until I had 2500$ so I could open a margin account. This would allow for options trading which allows you to take smaller positions thereby making it possible to spread your risk around. Then I would learn how to reduce my cost basis by selling positions against each other in vertical spreads while defining my risk. With about 3000$ in capital I currently have over 25 positions in good liquid stocks. Everything from UNG to FB, DIS, YHOO, AAPL etc. Tons of information on utube for option spread trading. Good Luck and Welcome

I would say don't trade or invest in anything until you have a plan. $500 into a $50/$100 stock isn't going to go far and could take years to make money from. Are you willing to just sit there and add to it over time to build a long-term account such as an IRA? Or do you want to trade small caps with potential to make 10/20% relatively quickly? So first decide what you goal is right now. Do you want to learn to actively trade or build an account of quality companies over time? Then learn a strategy based on what you want to do. You're young, you could afford to be a bit riskier, but at the same time it's never too early to start saving for retirement considering you will need multiple millions to retire well.

Couple questions, I know your only 19, but do you have any credit card debt or a car payment? Will you have student loan debt when you are finished with college? Debt is slavery these days. You will be able to save much quicker thus having more for trading/investing if you are out of debt. Just keep in mind for future if you are free and clear right now. I mean, I know nothing about you, so who knows, that $500 may be best sitting in a savings account until you can save up more as an emergency fund or to pay off future purchases. You should keep all your options open for now. Take some time to figure out what is best for YOU.