The best way to learn the basics is to go to a real time chat room. I belong to a website called TradingChief on this site around 150 traders meet every day during trading hours and talk stocks all day long. They give each other heads up on the hot stocks of the day etc. It cost $20 a month which I find very cheap. On that site they don't mind answering questions of people at various levels of trading. I'm not trying to do a plug for the site, as there are many out there, its just its the best I have found. It works for me.

Another good way of learning how to trade is by reading. Elder's 'Trading for a Living" is an excellent book, I believe he has a few other ones also in print. Its tough to learn to trade when you have a full time job during the day. This is the reason there are so many diffferent styles of investing, daytrading, position trading, swing trading, et etc, it depends on each investors availability to the almighty computer during the trading day. Once you figure out what kind of trader you want to be, then you can start reading up on that type of trading.

Al