So you want to trade? (Noob advice, new traders only) =====================================================
If you are more serious about trading and want to learn more, here are some basics and pointers you should know, this is just a newbie list, feel free to add more in the comments:
Technical:
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What is blockchain?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain
What is cryptocurrency?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency
What are wallets?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency_wallet
What is mining?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#Mining
What is Bitcoin?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
Where can I find out about coins?
http://www.coinmarketcap.com is a good place to start and google is your friend.
What is an ICO or initial coin offering?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_coin_offering
You do not need to have a deep technical understanding of all Blockchain solutions but a little bit of basics will never harm, its actually pretty interesting and allows a better big picture of what is going on.
Financial:
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What is an exchange?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange_(organized_market)
What is a crypto-currency exchange?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency_exchange
Exchange examples: http://www.coinbase.com http://www.gdax.com http://www.kraken.com
Good websites I trade on: http://www.bittrex.com http://www.binance.com
What is an over the counter exchange?
Over-the-counter or off-the-exchange trading of bitcoins is a more flexible and convenient way of trading bitcoins comparing to traditional exchanges. example: http://www.bitfinex.com
What is marketcap?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_capitalization
What are charts and how do they work?
Now this is very important, they are there for a reason and a good suggestion is make an account on https://www.tradingview.com/ and start learning: how charts work, trend analysis, indicators, stoch, RSI, MACD etc they will all help you in deciding how to choose a good coin and limit your chances of loss.
Get involved on development pages if you want, read announcements, follow up, get the telegram app for special trading groups, read on coinmarketcap, bitcointalk and many more. be informed.
Some other tips:
1) do not focus on "names" or "branding", if you want to play a little bit more safer route (never without risc) , pick a top 10 coin on http://www.coinmarketcap.com and see it perform long term
2) Read the information on the coin you choose, who is the team behind it, how many updates do they post, do they commit to changes, etc, all possible
information about the coin, the solution, the investors, the team, how many there are and so on, the more you know, the better you know the possibilities, the stronger the chance will be you picked a good coin.
examples of good and strong coins are Ethereum, Bitcoin, Litecoin etc
3) Long term is your most safe bet for profit and so is PATIENCE, no need to freak out if a correction comes, this is normal and trading will resume as normal pretty soon most of the time, yet not always.
4) Daytrading (only for advanced traders, do not attempt when new) is risky yet also highly profitable, I have my distribution in a simple 80/20 config, meaning 80 long term, 20 daytrade so i do notmiss out on opportunities
5) Its more safe to build in stop-loss for more risky coins. At a stop loss, your coin will be put in the market and sold at the price you state when it gets to that limit so limiting risc in case of loss.
6)DO NOT spend your lifesavings, this is only playmoney, in else, what you can afford to loose. I started with 50$, so can you
7) This is here purely for educational purposes, it is by no means a manual, HAVE FUN AND ENJOY :-)