When should I practice stock trading?
The best way to practice trading stocks is to set yourself up on a schedule. Of course everybody has a different routine regarding work and other commitments. If you can find half of an hour to dedicate to stock trading practice when the market opens that would be ideal. The location doesn’t matter nearly as much as the consistency of your practice.
If there is no way for you to be available to hone your trading skills when the market opens, you should take a look at your schedule to find a time when you can consistently get in a decent chunk of practice time. Spending just thirty minutes a day will make a big difference in your skill level. There are distinct advantages to being able to trade the opening bell, however. If there is absolutely no way to make that time available (even once or twice a week) then there is a technique to get a little bit of experience with the larger swings of the early morning market.
This technique involves setting up your charting software to read just the first couple of minutes of trading. You can do this at any point after the morning has already passed. You will get the most benefit from this activity if you can force yourself to ignore how the stock performed for the rest of the day. The idea is to look at a short interval chart (1 min to 5 min), and make predictions or practice trades based on the chart. Of course the drawback is that the chart is not real time so you are never under any time crunch to make your evaluations. Using this method in no way replaces practicing with streaming market data, but it can be an excellent stop gap solution.
Take a few moments out of your day to focus on your goal of learning to trade stocks. Making a set schedule is one of the most effective methods to improving your skill set.