well, first you should read the excellent "How to Make Money Selling Stocks Short": http://www.amazon.com/Money-Selling-Stocks-Short-Trading/dp/0471710490 http

well, first you should read the excellent "How to Make Money Selling Stocks Short": http://www.amazon.com/Money-Selling-Stocks-Short-Trading/dp/0471710490 http://www.amazon.com/Money-Selling-Stocks-Short-Trading/dp/... If you don't get what the authors are saying, that's probably a sign that what you're about to do is gambling. If you want to gamble, great, but it's important to understand when you are gambling, and to understand whether your grasp of the odds in any way correlates to reality - and that's the big challenge in learning to trade. Secondly, you should look at a good broker like Interactive Brokers: they offer a paper trade account for free, and a wide range of information on their website. Their software is excellent. If you find either their software or the information for individual investors on their website tough going or enormously intimidating (e.g. suddenly you realize that you're running an application that quite literally runs on money...), then that is also a sign that what you are about to do is gambling on unknown odds. http://www.interactivebrokers.com http://www.interactivebrokers.com If looking at these things dissuades you, then you will have learned something useful along the way - and hopefully it interests you enough to go look at other resources that teach a much better way to interact with the market.