Over the last 6 months as I have been considering different methods of escaping the rat race I have realized that in the current economic downturn some people are going to get richer.

As the price of most shares tumbled, I thought about the principle I use when buying & selling instruments.  Buy low, sell high.

I know a few financial advisors, but I actually do not really trust them.  None of them are financially free, so the questions I asked them were how the basics of shares trading works.

I was afraid of losing money in the stock market, then I received a letter from my pension fund managers saying they had lost 10% of my money.  I figured I could do a better job than that and withdrew the money in that account (paid in by my employer, so free money basically).

I then started to research.  I finally picked Seagate Technologies (STX) who make hard drives for computer systems.  They operate in the data storage market and are one of the largest companies.  Their share price had plummeted from $28 last Summer, to about $3!  I figured if ever there was a time to buy low and sell high, this would be it!

The next thing I had to do was open a shre trading account.  I picked an online brokerage, and transfered money in.  By the time I had the account fully set up and ready to trade with, the share price had already doubled to over $6.  I waited for it to drop, but it continued to climb.  I ended up buying 100 shares at $7.02.

The shares did go up in value as planned.  I wanted to make at least 10% on them for my 1st trade, but as the price continued to rise I held on.  It got to $8.40 or so, then started to slide.  I decided to sell if the price fell to $8.27 and set up an automatic order to sell if it got to that price.  It did.

I had an afternoon nap, and when I woke up I discovered I had sold my 100 shares of STX at $8.27.  So I had made a profit of $125 on & $702 investment in under 2 weeks.  I was pleased enough with that!!!

Now I am in the process of learning various techniques of trading.  I have since bought 2 other shares, one of which has increased over 20% in 2 weeks.

It feels like the road to becoming financially independet has some steep learning curves along the way.  I am looking forward to learning more every day.  Robert Kiyosaki is right when he says that you learn quicker when you put your money into a deal.  I am donig that now, and learning more every day!