playin' the stocks game
ctkrohn: Expect to lose your $2000.  I'm not trying to dissuade you -- investing is a skill, and if it only costs $2000 to learn it, you've done great.  If you're not afraid to lose your capital, you'll be much better positioned to take calculated risks.Be aware of commissions.  If you have only $2000, you will have to engage in fewer, more profitable trades -- otherwise commissions will completely erode your profits.  Let's say it costs $10 to make a round-trip buy/sell trade.  That's already 0.5% of your capital right there.  If you do 10 trades a year, you're starting off with an annual return of -5%.Traditional stock picking really isn't my thing.  It's nearly impossible to have an informational advantage.  The professionals can barely beat their benchmark on a regular basis.  It just doesn't make sense to play the stock picking game unless you have a credible reason to believe that you have an edge over the competition.A great place to hang out is www.nuclearphynance.com.  It's the best message board for quant finance.  Lurk there for a while and learn about the computational and quantitative side of finance.  Traditional stock picking isn't really related to hacking, but there are sides of finance that are.