Scottrade, the one I use, has whats called "virtual trading" for your training wheels. For real trading they charge $7. That's $7 in and $7 out for $14 buy/sell a position. They have good tutorials on there site on trading. There also
Investopedia.
I've been studying and trading stocks for 30 years. First mutual funds then individual stocks. I've taken years off in between but have learned quite a bit on the subject.
1, Never fall in love with any stock or any position you take.
2, Hope is an very very bad investment attitude.
3, Have a hard and fast sell rule. It depends on the beta of a stock (volatility). High volatility I sell around +-7% low volatility +-3%. Take profits quick and sell your losses even faster.
4, There's money in individual stocks but I mostly stay away from them. Bad new can wipe out position before the market even opens. I play index ETF's mostly the highly levered one. 2x-3x. I flip between long and short position and my longest holding time is 1-5 days.
Stocks markets are highly emotional and swing between being over bought to over sold. The game is to be on the right side of that trade either up or down.
CASH is always king!
There no such thing as a bad profit.
I rather have a small profit and miss a big move then to be caught in a down draft with my pants down and sell out at a steep loss.
REMEMBER you can always buy a stock back even after it runs up past your sell point and ride it up even higher BUT you have to have the cash to do it. That's where the sell disciple comes in. Cutting losses and taking profits.
Cheers.