Intro & a few questions

Hi,

I've been browsing the forum for about week and decided to say hi. I've been interested in shares & investment since I was a kid. I first started paper trading when I was 9 years old, graphing the hi-low from the newspaper every day after school. I've just started paper trading again - but leveraged currencies this time.

I plan on spending at least 1-2 years paper trading and learning, while saving capital, before actually entering for real (if I ever do, depends on how the paper goes I guess).

I've got a few questions:
-What's a good system or website to get set up for paper trading the NZX and ASX? (When I first did this as a kid, it was before the spread of home PCs so I did it all on accountancy paper and graph paper)
-For paper trading, would you normally use an 'all-in-one' site with charts, prices and portfolio management, or a combination or different sites, home-made spreadsheets etc?
-Also looking for some good book recommendations. Basically along two different lines:
-One for a general introduction to investment and trading. Something more along the lines of an explanation of terminoloy, fundementals and pointers for where to learn more rather than any systems or crash courses etc. Something that is a broad, brief and easy to read introduction.
-One for learning basics TA, with particular focus on FOREX.

I'm keen to learn a solid foundation of the basics/fundementals of trading while paper trading and assess how I do. I'll look to be paper-trading both FOREX and NZ/ASX to learn which suits me.

Hi maknz,

I'm currently learning forex as well, I think a better way of learning instead of paper trading is to open up an account with a provider that has no minimums and just do trades with 10c pips. It won't cost you an arm and a leg but you get the feel of handling real money. The others on the forum suggested OANDA, I personally use LatitudeFX right now.

I forgot to say. Look at Oanda for the free, unlimited FX Game.