I'd be very careful, if you're not experienced at all, you could get wiped out pretty easily in a market with this much volatility. A lot of people would've said today's trading session was a great day to buy, but look what happened.
This is what they call a Black Swan event and nobody's sure that we've seen the bottom yet.
Yes - especially since right now everyone and their broker are thinking of ways to get in at those prices. Chances of you getting a decent deal while it's still around are slim, especially if you have no prior knowledge. If you don't know enough to know who the fool is in the market, you are the fool.
True story, probably experienced by thousands of people. Know someone who was into daytrading stocks and such. He had a home, no mortgage, no debt. Ended up losing the home. Wife left, took the kids. Wife eventually came back with the kids, they live a simple life now in some apartment. Life is not what it was, but they're getting by.
If you don't know what you're doing, you can lose everything. When you talk with truly successful traders (I know one who makes a million a year or more), you learn to appreciate that doing it well is difficult and requires a discipline that few people have.
This fiduciary disconnect can create a lot of malevolent market behaviour if controls aren't in place. And more often than not, controls aren't in place.
>You win, you get commission. You lose, it's not your money.
You get a wage either way. If the bank profits you get a bonus too even if you lost your customers money. If you screw the bank up the gov bails you out and you still get a bonus.
Oh I doubt I will be jumping in to anything right now - while on one hand a low market seems tempting, I know nothing about it, so I still wouldn't take the risk. Though I will follow idlewords advice and do some pretend trading to figure things out. Thanks for the warning.
This is what they call a Black Swan event and nobody's sure that we've seen the bottom yet.
Edit: If you want to see an example of how these drops can be deceiving and might not represent the true bottom, look at Citi's chart: http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=C+Interactive#chart2:symb...
You don't want to be the guy who bought a large long position when the PPS was $20, thinking it would easily jump back up to 30 or 40.