I'm a newbie too and I have found (as others have said) that it is good to develop a portfolio to start with encompassing a few different tokens for projects and technologies I have faith in. I follow the track record of those organizations from their twitters, blog posts and social networks. I check the prices and news often and have a basic idea of what's going on in the market. While you are working on that, you can look into some of the market indicators and day trading techniques. Perhaps from there it will be easier to go from long positions to short ones.