After spending a few years of "playing around" in the market, I decided to get real serious about my trading. I have spent hours over the past year researching what professional traders do when trading successfully. I have come up with a basic plan that looks for many small gains so that over the year my portfolio shows a large gain. I look for about 3%-5% on any one trade and watch to minimize my losses. Since starting my account with TradeKing, I have been exposed to the wonderful opportunities that options can provide an individual investor. There is considerablly more risk involved but using my methods of strickly technical analysis of the charts, I have found that options can provide profits of ten times what I was gaining from buying the shares of stocks alone. By staying focused I have found that one well placed option position can make my monthly goals I set for myself each January. Boca_Bobby