A great place to start to learn about investing or hone your skills is the blog InvestLikeMe.blogspot.com. The author provides market news and articles regarding the technicals of stocks. He also shows you his current active portfolio and updates his trade real time on twitter so you can make the same trades as him.
I have never taken money back out of my TdAmeritrade. I started with $2000, and it is now worth $4500 (yay me!!). Anyways I sold 100% of my portfolio two days ago and it said my funds available to withdraw was $2.87 (because that is the only cash I did not have invested). So I just figured it had to settle.
Anyways this morning I swing traded a stock and made $100 bucks, but I only invested $3500. I would think I could still withdrawal at least the $2.87 since I did not invest all my money, but now it says $0 can be withdrawn. When can I expect to be able to take money out assuming I do not trade anything?