Thanks! I’ll take a look at your suggestions.
With all this good information coming in, maybe we could put together a Freeper guide to investment.
Slings, first, you are **absolutely** correct to seek out the terminology and the culture. That's a great start. The terminology and usage is in many cases entirely arbitrary (bonds, for example, still trade in 1/32nds, a legacy of none other than Spanish pieces of eight), and everybody -- and I mean everybody, self definitely included -- has gotten a term wrong or misunderstood a condition of trade once in a while. VERY costly.
Three things to remember at ALL times:
1) Investing and trading (trading is just investing in a shorter time frame) are about making a profit. Period. Everything else, ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING ELSE, is just a sideshow.
2) If, in any trade/investment, you cannot name to yourself two distinct advantages to holding your current position, GET THE HELL OUT. These advantages might be historical (a seasonal pattern in corn, say), statistical (selling overpriced IV in options, say), fundamental (owning a company's shares when the company has enjoyed 15 straight years of rising earnings, say), anecdotal (a certain company's products are simply flying off the shelf in your city, but the share price hasn't risen yet), or technical.
3) Markets are anticipatory discounting mechanisms of price. Said another way, by the time YOU have some news about company X, said news is worthless for evaluating the future prospects of the share price of X, because the mkt has already discounted it (because it, the mkt, had the news first).
Oh, yes, and sell short March OJ in mid-December, typically remaining short until mid-January. This trade has worked for decades (likely because a lot of people buy OJ in December looking for a damaging freeze of the FLA crop -- which practically never materialises).
Good trading/investing to you!