Some of my trading funds had cleared up a bit (meaning I sold before I lost my shirt), and now I am back to researching and gathering information for my next trade. I have yet to make a Scottrade account for the Level 2 quotes (and I'm not even sure if Scottrade's L2 is good for penny stocks) so I was in need of some other way of knowing the real-time price of a stock I am watching.

All right, hopefully you have an idea of what to look for when picking the right stock to flip. The trading game used to be all about investing for long periods of time and knowing when to cash out, but nowadays it's about taking quick profit and exiting. Only mutual funds, IRAs, and retirement plans should be invested in for long term causes (incubator funds as well, but we don't have that much money to play with, amirite?).

Follow a decent stock for as long as it takes to be able to predict movement throughout a typical day, preferably one recommended on several reputable forums. Profitable picks in my past have been ones I noticed did better at certain parts of the day (selling time) and dropped at other times (buying time, lunch hours are a key time). After I got confident predicting movement, I stayed at my computer the whole time my money was floating around.

                               Intraday movement of Google stock (06/22/11)

There are two options we're concerned with when putting in a buy/sell order: Limit and Market. Market orders mean you want in fast and limit orders mean you are fine waiting for a certain price. I have never had a market order because I don't invest on the spot. Always use limit orders to be safe. Quick money can be made with market orders as they take priority in trades, just know what is at stake.

Another part of an order you need to know is your qualifier. You'll usually see AON or a blank spot. AON means "all or nothing," meaning your trade won't go through unless your order is completed in one trade. This is fine for smaller orders or large volume trading. It severely inhibits trading with pennies however, as quite a few trades require several go-arounds to fill an entire order. This may take an hour or several hours.

A last few pieces of advice for today are to know standards among online traders. It's usually slow trading around 12-1 PM Eastern time, due to lunch time for the big guys in charge. Stocks are usually uncertain during this time and not a great time to sell. Power Hour is a term for the last hour of trading for the day during normal hours, which is 3:30 - 4:30 PM Eastern time. Big swings happen during this time as well and heavily influences the next day's trading. If it spikes up during this time, it's a bet on investors that the stock will spike early the next day. If you think so as well, put a limit order in and chose GTC instead of DAY. GTC means "good 'til cancelled," and DAY means the trade is good for that trading day only. Use GTC if you think you can predict price movement decently.

If you're looking for a standard day to buy a stock cheap, check out the price on Fridays. Fridays are notorious for drops in PPS (price per share). I have no certain idea why, but folks say investors don't want to hold their shares over the weekend and will sell at a lower price.

See that money moving around in the market? Go out there, do some research, learn how to grab it, and do not let go. Thanks to the internet, anyone can do it.

Continued from the other day, we're listing some decent and cheap trading sites. Now understand that since these are cheap to trade on, your best bet is to do your own DD outside and only use their site to make your trades. A trade from any of these sites = a trade from any highly advertised site. Since every complete trade needs two fees (purchase/sell), these sites save you at least $10 per complete trade. This is great since you're probably not playing with much to begin with.

                                      Level 2 Stock Quotes from 06/21/11

So you have some free time and want to make some money. In college, there's a lot of ways to put together some booze money, but few are interesting. We're going to explain some of our methods we use when researching stocks to flip. Obviously, now's the time for a disclaimer even though it would be all your fault if you messed up anyways: WE'RE NOT TRAINED OR LICENSED INVESTORS, I BARELY PASSED ECON 102.

Penny stocks is the game. Yep, that's it, let your groans out now. No reputable magazine has ever said penny stocks were great to throw your money at and invest in, but here's the catch: we're not going to be investing. The only thing you'll read here today is how we flip stocks quickly, normally within a day or a week at most. Never "invest" in a penny stock unless you're part of the company.

First thing you need to figure out is how much you're going to gamble or "invest." For what we're about to write, several hundred dollars is fairly standard. Any more than that and you'll want to invest in better alternatives. I started out with $400 my first time and it worked out nicely.

The most important part of trading/flipping these stocks is doing your Due Diligence (DD). This includes knowing what the company does, how they make money, how often they update their PRs, whether they address shareholders often, etc. I typically look for a company that has been around for at least two years, has at least three PRs a month, and doesn't have a history of reverse-splits.

Never put money into a penny stock that has reverse-splits in its history, it means they dilute their shares. Also try not to invest in sub-penny stocks, in which each share is less than a penny. For instance, BGOI as of Friday (otcbb.com) is .0011 pps (price per share). Unless they have news saying something big is coming, and be cautious if they do, don't put money in sub-pennies.

After getting used to what to look for, here are some basics to flipping. Don't think you can get more when you actually make a profit. Take your profit and run. A decent flip on a penny stock is between 20-50%. Any more and you're risking a lot, though you do have a lot to gain. I typically have my orders set to making 30% profit while I'm in class or when I'm away from the internet during a trading day.

To get you more informed, here are a few sites I use when doing research:

Hot Stock Market - best forum I've come across for info on any stock. I heed their advice more often than other sites. Also, their "Trade journals and stock tips" section is quite helpful.

IHUB - be cautious about this forum. You'll see a lot of spam, but also occasionally you'll see some good findings members post. A good post will show their source. This site also tends to find the phone number of the company's TA (transfer agent) so you can call yourself to find info.

Common trading terms - I bookmarked this site long ago so I can easily go to the page, CTRL + F my term, and then find a definition quickly. You'll come across a lot of trading terms when in the forums, this site makes it easy to translate.

Abbreviations - as with terms, there are huge amounts of abbreviations used on forums and sites as well. This site's search option makes finding a term from an abbreviation really quite simple.

That's all for today, tomorrow we'll detail some of the sites we have found are great for small-time traders who want cheap and want results. Later, and happy trading! Continued here.

All right well we at College DownTime have been putting together some time the past couple days to try to make a fairly decent article about how we've made a few extra bucks in the past (and hopefully present depending on a news report). Next week we're posting several articles detailing our experiences with trading securities, stocks, bonds, and forex (trading monies).

                        A few trades from our early times, notice the 50% profit

We're putting together a few tutorials to get you started with the basics on trading, especially penny stocks. Yep, that's right. The "scam" you've seen in spam emails is real. We don't mess with expensive stocks or options trading, but instead work more with stock which are primarily based on speculation (though it can be more precise than it sounds). Through our experiences with quite a few trades and research, we can give you a good knowledge basis if you're actually interested in learning a bit about this lucrative, but surprisingly easy, trading scheme. Get in, get out, and keep your money safe.

Wait for Monday, we'll post an article on what to look for when researching stocks!