How do I start out on the stock market?

Question

I am a college student and I am making a bit of money on my own now so I'd like to start investing a little, not too much but at least some to get me started. I was wondering if people could give me some tips on how to start out. For example: is there a good website out there to help me manage my stocks? About how much do I need to invest to make it at all worthwhile. What kinds of companies are good to start out with? Any advice will be helpful.

Answer 1

"Only buy what you understand"

"Buy what you like"

Anything that you invest will be better than nothing.  Since you are young you have the magic of compound interest working for you as well.  www.morningstar.com has a ton of information regarding mutual funds, if that is what you are looking for.

Owning individual stocks can be beneficial as well.  Just make sure that you understand the business and try to buy the companies that you like.

That train that goes by your house four times a day...good investment?

You drink a certain brand of soda pop, or eat a certain kind of food...good investment?

You like a certain make of car....fill up at a certain gas station....you pay your electric bill....everything you can think of will offer itself to you as a good investment in the market.  The trick is that you have to figure out whether or not it really is a good investment.  

Read "Beating the Street"   by Peter Lynch

          "The Warren Buffett Way"

          "The Intelligent Investor"  by Benjamin Graham

And if all else fails, and the market looks to shady to you I would recommend reading up on real estate.  You could buy up a few properties and rent them out.  As inflation kicks in, rents will go up but your mortgage will stay the same.

70% of the wealthiest people in the world made their money in real estate.  Nobody likes it right now and the prices reflect that.  Eventually this will turn around.

Good luck to you!

Answer 2

I´ve been investing for more than 20 years and trading for almost 14, and I can tell you that if you want to make BIG and FAST profits, I recommend you trading rather than investing, trading can help you to go from rags to rich.

If you are investing, you must have already achieved some degree of financial success, long term stock investing and FOREX can help you to diversify your money and become much richer than you are today.

My experiences as a Nasdaq Market Maker, Head trader of several brokerage firms, and currently as a professional trader and private hedge fund manager, I can suggest you that:

We trade because we want quick, short term profits on a consistent basis. We want to cash flow the market. Milk it like a cow.

Make consistent, small, short term gains rather than trying to hit a home run on every trade. Don't ever forget that.

Don't marry a stock, marry the idea of making money trading stocks. That's the only way to do it.

For me "All stocks are equally worthless”

I don't hold on to any illusion that the stock market will continue to go up and provide a nice retirement for me.

I could care less which way the market goes. It's irrelevant to me if the market goes higher, crashes or moves sideways for the next 50 years. I really could care less. Stocks are just four letters with two prices next to them that I use to make a living trading.

Trade ONLY when you have a clear, easy and identifiable advantage, because without a CLEAR EDGE your odds of success are NO better than a flip of a coin… That´s why so many new traders (and investors) lose money.

Take a look at any daily chart of any index or stock and you'll probably see the most volatility and the biggest opportunity for profit during the first Hour of the stock market's opening.

The popular thinking and conventional wisdom is that you should wait about an hour before you start trading.

But if you do, you'll miss the big, fast moves that stocks make as all the amateurs let their emotions out through their online accounts, usually right after they read some news headline or hear Maria Bartiromo go off about a stock on CNBC.

It's easy to see why trading the open is the market's prime time for profiting from other online traders.

The market's open is very volatile - that is the perfect environment for LARGE, FAST profits.

Learn to trade as a professional Market Maker, not as an emotionally driven amateur trader or investor with few thousand dollars in an account at Etrade.

There isn't any other time during the day or any stock you can invest in, that can make you 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 or more points in minutes OTHER than during the first hour the stock market is open, that means: if you are buying or selling short a 1000 shares per transaction, you´ll make $1000,$2000,$3000,$5000 or $7000 Usd "IN MINUTES !!!" not in a day, not in a week, not in a month or in a year, in less than 60 minutes... That's why I love trading the open so much.

I trade only when I have an edge and that means "only the first hour the market is open".

If you are a beginning trader, you can give yourself an unfair advantage in the market trading this way.

I can carry on for hours on how to make money trading online, but if you ask me:

"What is your best advise?

I will say:

Give yourself a BIG favor and go to this "Top Secret" site and learn how to get by yourself the BEST stocks that will make the largest and fastest day trading profits you´ve ever seen.

www.onehourtrading.com

After you review this site you won´t need any system, strategy, book, software, guru or mentor to tell you what to do, you will be able to profit HUGE every day.

Besides, you´ll learn:

• The right amount of money to start trading…

• The best Online broker out there…

• Learn how to enter and exit a trade in seconds making Huge profits…

• Make more money than most day traders simply by trading one hour a day!!!

• How to reduce stress, limit risk and stay disciplined like a Pro.

• The 4 basic rules you should know, that every successful trader know, and amateurs don´t even imagine.

• How to trade against the amateurs and avoid like the plague doing it against the professionals , and why this will put you ONE STEP AHEAD of all traders.

• What causes more devastating trading loses than any other factor... and... How to avoid this pitfall! (Even savvy traders often fall victim to this! )

• Not to spend most of your day in front of a computer dealing with complex charts, software or technical analysis.

• Learn how to read the market´s open to make a huge profit just a few minutes after the opening bell.

All this and a lot more…

Good luck and good trading,

John Fontaine

Answer 3

The short answer:  educate yourself on the stock market, invest in an index fund and practice.

There is no hurry to investing in the stock market, it will always be there.  First thing you should do is educate yourself.  There are plenty of good books on stock market  investing, look for Warren Buffet, Peter Lynch, and I recommend the Motley Fool.  The Motley Fool website has a bunch of information on getting started as well.  http://www.fool.com .  As you save up money you can start putting it into an index fund (historically they average 11% annually) while you learn how to invest.  Next I would recommend setting up a mock portfolio, research different stocks and experiment with different strategies until you find one you are comfortable with.  You can track a mock portfolio with Yahoo! Finance or quicken, and I believe http://fool.com has mock portfolios as well.  Patience is the most important virtue you can have as an investor, it will behoove you to begin early.  Good luck.

I write a blog that teaches stock market investing to a generally military audience.  You might find it useful:

http://semperfinance.blogspot.com

a post on qualities of a good investor -- http://semperfinance.blogspot.com/2008/0...