When I first started trading through an online brokerage I went through a phase of "information overload". I was using E*Trade (which I still do for some of my trading) and using Worden's TeleChart for charting (when I moved to commodities I started using MetaStock for charting and backtesting). I had the world of information at my fingertips. There is a danger to being able to examine information on any equity or futures contract traded in the market, you can easily lose focus. Let's face it, we just don't have the capacity to follow every market for every traded stock, option, future, or currency pair.
When I realized that part of the reason I was losing money was that I was trying to do too much, that I was falling into the trap of feeling that there was an opportunity out there somewhere if I just searched hard enough, that I had to be in the market all the time, then, and only then, did I begin to consistently win. So how do we deal with all of this information? We discriminate (in the good way, not the bad). We carefully choose the markets we are going to trade. We start small and slowly increase our capacity. If you are trading equities, start with stocks you already know. Pick no more than ten to follow and follow them in whatever timeframe you are trading until following these ten is no problem. Once you can follow these ten without missing anything then add another interesting stock to your stable. In this way you limit your trades to only those you've actually studied. You develop an understanding of how certain stocks move and you can learn to exploit that understanding. You are not in the market all the time, rather only when you have the best of it.
The same principle applies to currency pairs, futures contracts and options. If you slowly stretch your knowledge and understanding instead of just jumping into the deep end of the pool, you are much more likely to swim than to sink.
Good Trading!
