i appreciate what you are saying Clubman, i read an earlier post where someone was not too happy about the recent losses incurred on the irish market, i can see that this is not the viewpoint to take when investing you should look at things from a much longer term view, but it would still be nice to start by buying in at a good time.
from what i've learned so far people invest based on technical or fundamental analysis or both, it sounds to me like you invest based on fundamental analysis.
i've been reading the market commentary on ino.com today, and they predict further bearish outlook for the nasdaq and s&p500, ino's commentary seems to based on technical tools such as rsi and stochastics, i haven't learned much about how these tools work or what they mean, i hope to spend more time over the next few weeks learning.
do you have any faith in any technical analysis tools such as these or are there other expert opinions out there that you could recommend?
as a beginner i'm going decide when to open my account based on opinions on this forum and other sites that are recommended.