Never buy or sell stocks.
Doesn't that sound really strange, or even wrong? How can anyone trade if they don't buy or sell anything? It's a matter of perception.
Think of trading as a matter of opening and closing positions, rather that buying or selling, going long or shorting your stock.
For the new or somewhat inexperienced trader, sometimes it can be quite a difficult concept to grasp.
You will definitely hear of traders talking in terms of positions being opened and closed One way I would suggest is to print out a graph from your trading chart software, any stock, share, indices will do.
Now simply turn the page through 90 degrees so that the newest data is pointing upwards.
What you now see is your stock going either to the left or right, rather than up or down.
What I'm saying is that this serves to demonstrate that it depends upon your perception of what the stock price is doing, and what you can see now is the stock varying from left to right to left, not increasing or decreasing in price or going up and down.
So you don't really buy or sell but make a judgment whether the stock is going to go in one or the other direction.
This is particularly appropriate if you're spread trading, or spread betting.
Also, I would strongly suggest using a gently or more slowly trending stock for this, the FTSE 250 or 350 offers such stocks, it'll be a lot easier.
Commodities for instance will generally be far too erratic.