went to our community’s Beltane celebration in central MA, but I’m on duty. It’s been a little annoying, because I’ve been on duty for meals and dorm, but I’ve had lengthy morning and afternoon periods when there’s been virtually no one here. If I could have found someone to cover for me, I might have gone, at least for a little while. Instead, I have to be here.

I’ve been using the time to good effect, though. This morning before the dorm wakened but after Clio’s walk, I watched a Trading Room practicum from INVESTools on risk management. I found it to be quite helpful given what I’ve been trying to do in the market of late. I watched a second one during the morning sports session, and I’m watching a third now. I also worked my way through the first three sections of the Basic Options Course textbook.

I never imagined that learning the stock market would be akin to taking a master’s degree level course, but I’m finding it to be tremendously interesting. Most information is presented graphically rather than numerically. There are chart patterns that are clearly visible when you look at them, and these can give you pretty good feedback on whether you’re about to make a lot of money or a little.

So far I’ve made about $600 in this last month of April; I began trading on March 27, 2008, so it’s been not quite a month. I think — I plan — to match or double that in May, because it looks like the market may be recovering a little from its four or five month-long funk. But we’ll see. That said, I feel like I learned a lot from today’s marathon schooling session, and I aim to double that knowledge tomorrow.

The most important thing I think I learned today was how to set reward to risk at 2:1 at the least. It’s probably the most useful thing I’ve learned since I began trading. Before now, I was worried about setting stoploss orders so I didn’t lose money, but I didn’t think how to set the market so that I gained more money than I lost. Hmmm.

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