These are some of the things I've come to learn from my own experiences to date:

• Take much of what you hear from analysts and the media with a grain of salt. When I first started investing, if an analyst or someone in the media said something negative about a stock I owned, I would literally take it personally and get angry. I found myself lying awake in bed at night parsing their statements in my head. 

• Try not to be overly informed (information overload). When I first started investing, I would click the refresh button every five seconds for stock quotes and scan every investing website minute by minute trying to be instantly informed. Much of the day to day news related to a stock you own does not affect its price.

• Do not read the forums on Yahoo Finance or Google Finance. 99% of what people say out there is garbage (IMO).

• If a stock you own ends down for the day (or visa versa), do not waste your time trying to think of every possible reason it moved the way it did.

• Read "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham

In addition to the things Upod mentioned above.  I can really only think of three things

• Read 'Your Money & Your Brain' by Jason Zweig 
• When you have a stock you want to invest in discuss it with a friend.   I have one person that I go to when there is a new stock I want to buy.  If I can't convience him that the stock is a good purchase, I don't buy it.  The person I go to is negative about any idea I have right from the get go. He will start pointing out disadvantages about owning the stock.  If I can't combat all the negatives, than either I don't know enough about the company or he brings up something I didn't consider during my analysis.  When he has an idea about a stock, I do the same for him.  
• Understand when your trading strategy will work the best and when it won't.

-Don't spend time figuring out the fundamentals of such and such company. Use material published by others (J. Jubak on MS Money, IDE, Navellier). Why ? It is their job, it is free or reasonably priced and they are serious. However, they don't have a crystal ball!

-Spend the time saved to try to figure out the market sentiment and sector sentiment (Tech Ticker on Yahoo finance and Seeking Alpha (some "posters' are really good and helpfull and your quickly recognize the emtional rants). Why ? The market is the tide that lifts all the boats.

-Check your choice of stock on MS Money (Caps) and / or on this community but effectively don't loose your time on yahoo discussion board. The few good posts are drawn under the emotional and insulting ones.

-Don't forget that most of what moves the market has NO SKIN IN THE GAME. If I recall well, an analyst is forbidden to own stocks he/she recommends. Furthermore, from my 30 years in this industry, I remarked that what makes people really nervous is not the money lost but the money not made. I recall analysts being literally slapped in public for urging caution during the .com bubble. This explains some of the exuberance you can see on the market.

-On the subject "skin in the game", I am going to check about mutual funds whose managers have stock invested in their own funds and what these funds hold.

-What I am doing now, since I am starting, is dividend capture strategy on stocks that pay high dividends. It gives some real fundamental reason to invest with a good cushion downwards. However this is not a sure bet. Did well on AXA, DSX and not good on PFE and NOK. Horizon should be one month top. 

Tradist:

I think however you are refering to a stop order:

"An order to buy or sell a security when its price surpasses a particular point, thus ensuring a greater probability of achieving a predetermined entry or exit price, limiting the investor's loss or locking in his or her profit. Once the price surpasses the predefined entry/exit point, the stop order becomes a market order."

You can also combine them into a stop limit order.  The Tradeking interface wont let you do anythomg too stupid, as it will prompt you for oddities. So you can play and just not execute the trade, or cancel the order till you figure it out. It took me 3 tries to do my first limit order.

70Cuda said: Newby trader here.

Question 1: When you place an order to purchase stock at the current market price, how long does it take for that purchase transaction to show up as completed in your Tradeking account?

   The Market Price is a term that is a bit fuzzy. There is a Bid Price (what the current highest offer for the stock is), and an Ask Price (what the current lowest price a holder is willing to sell at). The difference is called the Spread. The B/A size is the current number of shares offered at those prices. The price of the stock is the price at which the last trade was completed.

   If you are referring to a Market order, you will start buying the lowest Ask price until the Ask size is depleted, then will move up to the next ask size. Selling uses the Bid Price. This is why a savvy investor does not place large market orders (very small orders are ususually safe unless you are a very unlucky). I reccommend usng limit orders at the lowest Ask price for safety if you want fast execution.

   But to answer your question - It's a matter of seconds. :-).

Question 2: Do you more experienced marketeers think the NYSE is going to drop back into the 6000 range and if so what is your best guess WHEN and will there be any advanced signals, other than it going down?

   I don't - at least any time soon. In time, of course, it will drop to zero when society collapses - nothing last forever. I don't expect this to happen in my lifetime, unless the predictions about Dec 21, 2012 are true (no, I'm not buying a cave to hunker down in).  I do expect there to be a pullback once the Market realises that the economic downturn will take quite awhile to recover. Once that happens, though, I suspect the Market will oscillate around some value (maybe 9k? 8k? no way to be sure) which will slowly drift upward as the underlying economy recovers. But 6k? I don't think so - I think Panic (and short) selling oversold the true bottom. In the very short term I suspect the Market to continue it's rise.

   Hope I helped. :-)

~~Weird Uncle Jesse~~