We had our first meeting of our online stock trading group.  It was a diverse crowd, with men and women of all ages.   Our knowledge was all over the board, too.  Some of us had been trading for years, and some had never even had a brokerage account.

Jim was the founder of the group, but was not going to necessarily be the leader. That task went to Sarah and John.

Sarah was a new trader, and John had been at it for many years. He referred to himself as a dinosaur and not very good on the computer but getting better.  Sarah was all gung-ho and had recently set up accounts with a couple of brokers.

She thought that this was the best time to buy, but was exercising caution because of the volatility of the market.  One day it was up and one day down.

Sarah had copied some information from a government web site, which outlined some cautions to take for anybody considering online stock trading.

Basically, the site reminded traders that they are not directly linked to the market, and that when you click to buy or sell, you may not be doing so in real time.

Also, to go along with that, we should make sure that the quotes and account updates are in real time, too.  If not, how long is the delay?

Some other things to do are to research the firm, for stability on a number of different levels: financial and operational.  You don’t want to get involved with a brokerage that can’t prove its financial status, and you don’t want to be working with a company whose web site and computer operations are not state of the art, or are shutting down.

We decided to have an election of “officers”, so somebody could take charge. Sarah was elected president, and John was to be the vice president.  I offered to be the secretary and keep the minutes of the meetings. I thought this would help me to pay attention.

The meetings were to be every other Saturday morning at 6:30-am, at least while the markets were so erratic.