@MarkAus Hey Mark. Its nice to read your blog and you pretty well reflect what I went through in initial phase of trading. Am from India, working in middle east and moving to Australia soon( depending on when NSW offers me state sponsorship ;) ) I too started pretty optimistic with Suretrader. Had some fantastic days but inexpiernce and greed took better off me and ultimately lost $3000 last year. No regrets. It was a great time to learn. I will resume trading once in Aus using your cheap credit system :) . Just wanted to ask you man, how do u manage trading if working in a day 9 to 5 job?

Wow it's June! I'm not on here much these days, the year has been tough. Anyway, update time: I found work 4 weeks ago with Telstra. Yay employment! I started paper trading again and so far Im the green. I've learned a fair bit since I was last here and now understand how risky the whole Penny Stock trading is. Shorting is crazy risky and the strategy is more for advanced traders with cash. Been doing some study on Trend Trading and although not super lucrative short term its a great way to learn the prof with less fear. Highly recommend it for Aussies who want to trade US stocks. I'll post more when I have time.

Update or 27th March 2016 -- I've been away for months and months for various reasons. Life is a little weird for me and the markets have been too unstable. Looking at Suretrader again after getting some info back from them. Might look into trading again come the next few weeks if things go well. Be careful out there. The markets could be heading very, very bearish this year. $SPY has been doing naughty, naughty things.

@MarkAus Hey mate, apologies for the random message. I'm an Aussie and am just kind of getting into this, still learning and looking at brokers/platforms but won't be kicking things off til I've paper traded for a while. I was looking at Options Express and on the face of it their fees seem not too bad. A couple of your updates indicate you're not happy with them? Any feedback is much appreciated.

2015 looks finished for me: I invested a lot with Guru's hoping to learn trading along with a strategy. Mostly it's been educational but also way overpriced and frustrating. Stay away from premium priced Guru's with their insane marketing. Stick with cheaper, transparent Guru's if need be and know none support international users very well. Stay away from 'yearly subscriptions' & alerts. Monthly sub is best to test the waters of a Guru as most can't teach for shit. Next I plan to get my account in the green (next year) and prey to the dark gods that I can trade through America's economy bubble explosion. Even then I still need a broker that works! A bane in my side! GL.

I tried to create an OptionsXpress tutorial video and when I went "submit" the page had an error and lost everything. Hmm. Yay Profitly!!! I'll try to record with something else I guess and put it on Youtube.

Just a quick update in regards to an OptionsXpress video tutorial; this is still to be done unfortunately I haven't had the time to do so yet. I really think the web needs one. Profitly has a Video Record option now so I'll give it a go. If that fails I'll try to use another video recorder of some sort. If anyone really, really needs info or could use the tutorial asap let me know. Cheers.

My new Watchlist system is working well but still needs lots of testing. All these guru's seem pretty shit at showing how they find stocks so it's an uphill battle. So far 3 or my 4 charts had great opportunities for profits. Two I got from Matt D; one of them was great. Today I found this: NSSC "Record Annual Revenue of $77.8 Million". If this sucker can retest $7 on a dip and get past $7.50 and even $7.85 expect further highs. Im still a noob but whatever.

Well this week has been very crappy so far. Tonight I lost about $40 on two trades total. I'm not angry at the trades, I had my plan and bailed quick but this Bear Market sux balls -- The DVD's and info I study has been great but at the end of the day I still have many issues trading. I never see opportunities shown by the guru's. Could be the Bear Market but I'm getting very flustered about the whole thing. Wish I could sit with someone just once so they could correct me on stuff. Be careful out there!! Check out my new blog on OX!!