I'm fairly new at trading , but so far it is working out OK for me.
First decide which kind of trading you want to do , day trading or swing trading.
Day trading requires some huge capital and that you put a lot of eggs in one basket as you are sometimes trying to make gains on stocks moving a fraction of a cent.
Swing trading gives you more time and room to play and you can diversify a little more , if things go bad on one play you can hold it until it works in your favour.
Forget about fundamentals , you will be trading on market hype , fear and greed , nothing else.
I have been trading small cap pharmaceutical companies that are awaiting FDA decisions on drug applications , they almost always run up in anticipation of the expected approvals , I always sell just before the approval date in case it is rejected or delayed.
If approval comes through you could miss out on some nice gains , but if it doesn't , (and it usually doesn't) , you still walk away with a nice profit (actually all profits are nice aren't they?

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It's been working for me the last six months or so.
The FDA has a calendar of upcoming approval applications and some investor services do research strictly in this area.
As an example , I bought NRI a few months ago @.15 when investors were climbing on board in anticipation of approval of their new drug which is already selling in Canada and Europe.
I sold a few days before approval date @.475 , approval was delayed and prices fell back to the low 20's.
I've done this ten or twelve times in the last few months and done quite well , there are a couple that didn't work out and I am still holding , unlike going to a casino , if it doesn't work out right away not all is lost , you still have your stock and you can hold it until it move up again.
All said , I am way up so far , and the ones that didn't work oput are only down marginally , as well I don't put too much capital into any one company , usually no more than $2500.
I usually set a goal and try to stick to it , if I can realise a 20% profit I'm out , it is hard to sell though when a stock keeps moving up , on the NRI I took a chance and it paid off , but sometimes you can lose all your gains just by hanging on a little too long.
I aleays put my sell orders in after close , stock prices are usually highest first thing in the morning if your selling.
I don't buy books about it , I don't research the companies , I don't use any fancy platform or software I just trade from my bank investor account and follow the hype , discussion groups on Google finance is one of my best sources of direction for any given stock I want to trade.
When my profits reach a certain dollar ammount in my account , I buy well paying REIT's to make full use of it and reduce the chances of me using it all on speculative plays.
This is just what has been working for me , others may disagree.