New Guy, You can place a limit order to buy the stock when it reaches your desired buy price. You can also set a stop, which will automatically sell the stock for you if it takes a huge dive. You can also place a limit sell order to sell at your high price. Lastly, some platforms will allow you to place a sell order if condition x, or condition y occurs. I know Scottrade does this.
So you can set a limit order to buy at $10. Then you can set a conditional sell order that will sell when the stock dives to $9 (to prevent a loss), or when it rises to $12 so you collect a profit.
Then the question that you need to answer is if enough $10 levels, and $12 levels will occur to make you enough money to offset the losses when it falls to $9. You only need to win more than about half to make money. You may find that buying at $10 and selling at only $10.50 will make you more money in the long run since the stock will hit $10.50 much more often than it will rise to $12 or fall to $9. You just need to look at past history and never stop evaluating whether things have changed.
SM
