How to Make Money by Jobbing in the Stock Market

Open a brokerage account that lets you buy and sell stocks and bonds. You can opt to work through a traditional brokerage account, where a broker provides personalized service and advice. The fees for a traditional account often make them prohibitive for the frequent buy-and-sell pattern of stock jobbing. Online brokerage accounts, which provide minimal personalized service and advice, provide the advantage of much lower fees for trading, which lends itself to jobbing.
Understand how a stock chart tracks the past performance of a stock in terms of price. Stock charts typically include graphs that show price movement as jagged lines that cover days, weeks or months of past trading. Some charts represent price movements as vertical bars, called candlesticks, that show the top and bottom prices for a given day.
Understand the support and resistance levels of stocks. Some stocks will persistently fall to a particular price, rise to a particular price and then fall back to the original price. These are the support and resistance levels. The support level, at which the price bottoms out, represents the point at which demand picks up and investors begin to buy. The resistance level, at which the price peaks, represents the point at which demand falls off and investors begin to sell the stock.
Choose an appropriate stock to purchase. Stock selection for jobbing requires you to research the market. The right stocks exhibit ongoing price fluctuations but with relatively predictable support and resistance levels. After you find a stock that shows volatility, but within predictable limits, you wait for the stock to reach its support level and then purchase shares. After the stock reaches its resistance level, you sell the stock shares and pocket the difference. To make stock jobbing profitable, you need to select stocks that demonstrate a large enough difference between support and resistance levels that, when you sell, you make enough to pay the fees and taxes but still make a profit.
Pay your taxes. You are responsible for paying short-term capital gains taxes at your current tax rate for profits on stock jobbing. The Internal Revenue Service may require you to pay estimated tax payments on jobbing profits. Consult with your accountant to determine if or when you need to make payments.

How to Measure Stock Performance

Determine the original stock price. This is the price of the stock when you purchased it. Let's say you purchased the stock for $50 per share.
Determine the current or ending stock price. The ending stock price is its price when sold, say, at the end of the year for tax purposes. Let's say you are considering the sale of your stock, but want to know its performance first. The current value of the stock is $60.
Determine the stock's earnings. This is the difference between the ending (or current) price and the original purchase price. The calculation is: $60 - $50 = $10.
Calculate the stock's performance. Divide the stock's earnings by the original amount paid. The calculation is: $10 / $50 = .20, or 20 percent. This is your return on investment.

How to Buy Stock Options (5 Steps)

Understand the different type of options that are available. The two main types of options are puts and calls. Puts give the buyer an option to sell the underlying stock at a certain price during a given period. Calls allow the buyer of the option the ability to buy the underlying stock at a certain price in a given period.
Track and research the performance of the underlying stock. If, after the research, you expect the stock to rise in price, you should consider purchasing a call stock option. However if you expect the stock price to fall, the put stock option is the correct purchase. There are many permutations of these basic options principles, but these are the trading options for beginners. In the option business, they call this directional trading.
When you see, call or put a price of $2.00, the cost of this option is not $2.00 but $200.00. This is because stock options sell in lots of 100 share options. This is a common mistake for beginning options investors.
Decide which stock option you want to purchase and if you want a put or call option on the underlying stock. Again, a put is option to sell and a call is option to buy the underlying stock. You will need to contact a broker or visit an online option-trading site to place the order. See Resources below for information.
Buy the stock options for the given market price. Be sure to check the strike date of the option. The strike date is when the option expires. If you do not exercise by this date, it expires and you lose your investment. It is usually a good idea buy to stock options with the latest strike date. However, sometimes the stock option will be cheaper the closer it is to the strike date. Despite being cheaper, these short strike dates carry more risk.

How to Calculate Stock Risk (3 Steps)

Evaluate the market risk of the stock. Identify the industry the stock belongs to and read the industry forecast as well as the forecast for the stock market as a whole. If the you are in the middle of a bear market (stock prices are falling), the stock you are interested in is more likely to fall as well.
Measure the stock-specific risks. This risk depends primarily on the performance of the underlying company, namely on its market position, revenues, profits, orders and costs. The company's dividend policy (whether it reinvests its profits or pays them out to shareholders) also matters.A good way to measure stock-specific risks is to calculate the company's price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio. To do that, divide the corporation's market share price by the earnings per share. Alternatively, divide the company's market valuation by the profits it made during the previous year. High P/E ratios (e.g., 30 or above) may indicate that the stock is risky (the average P/E ratio is about 15).A good look at the company's break-up value is also important. The break-up value is basically the amount of money shareholders would get if the company was liquidated. It can be estimated as the company's assets minus its liabilities. The higher the break-up value of a company, the less risky its stock is (investors can recoup their investments even if the company is sold off).The risks to the company's performance may also come from competitors or innovation in the marketplace. Cheap Asian competitors are a particular concern in the 21st century.
Analyse the market and stock-specific risks and evaluate the overall stock risk. What are the chances that the stock price will go down or that the company will fail? Combine the evaluations from Steps 1 and 2 to measure the stock's risk.