christopher, so from your experience Vancouver is the best? i was there during Aug 2003- Jan 2004 and enjoyed it there. i loved mild winter, while in Toronto, Montreal and Calgary theres -40 celcius in the winter Vancouver enjoys its average winter temperature of +6. the olny thing i didnt like is that it rained tooo much. but from locals i heard that rains is what made the region so green and beautiful.
i hope to go back there.
christopher, my advice to you is to first read some of the following books:
Market Wizards
Reminiscences of Stock Operator
(these 2 books are from master traders' own experience and you learn a lot about the psych of trading)
When i was just starting Market Wizards helped me a lot psychologically... Rem. OF Stock Operator will show you what NOT to do in order not to go broke in the game. I personally admire Jesse Livermore though he went broke 4 times and ended up badly, but you dont have to repeat his mistakes. and these books wont give you an edge to trading but they'll give some very good hints on how to trade succefully, another important thing is that you dont have to repeat mistakes those master traders did when they were beggining in the business of trading.
IF you want some pit-trader trading wisdom (day trading oriented) Logical Trader by Mark Fisher is the best thing out there. you can also watch his seminars for free on here:
http://www.clicklive.com/NYMEX/symposium_2003/content_page.htm
there are some other great people talking during that NYMEX Symposium, my favortie are Paul Jones and Ari Kiev. the book of Ari Kiev - Trading To Win will let you get rid of bad habbits that often become obstacles for traders to rid their profits and so on.
If you wanna know some vital statistics of the markets and how people came to them i suggest you reading Toby Crable's book "Day Trading With Short Term Price Patterns and Opening Range Breakout "
and Larry Williams Long Term Secrets To Short Term Trading.
Its the best thing to take your time and start slowly. i didnt take that advice and it costed me money.
After you've gone through all the stuff and came out with some kind of a concept(set of trading rules, the edge, call it whatever you want) you can then paper trade for a little while and see how you're doing. you can always lose your money, so dont hurry to trade.
hope this helps