Stocks/Investment newbie?

Question

I want to invest like 50 dollars into something . I have no idea about anything with stocks and investing money but I was to do it. I see commercials and hearing people talk about it always sounds like a great idea but I never knew how and want to learn how now !

Answer 1

Before jumping in, you might join an investment club.  You really should have at least $2,000.00 to invest and ideally, $10,000.00.    I think this would generally accepted advice on entering the stock market.

Answer 2

You have to pay a fee to buy and sell stocks.  That cuts into your percentage.  You should invest no less than $2,000 at a time into one stock or ETF.  The ups of the day would wash away what you had to pay to get into the stock.  If you have a 401K plan, stick the $50 in that.

You might want to read investopedia.com. It's free and online.

Answer 3

Start reading and save your $. With fifty dollars, you can buy a series i bond from your bank. This will give you interest and more interest if inflation increases. Start reading. You can read Jim Cramer's books, Yahoo Finance, www.bloomberg.com. Also, you can go online at Schwab, TD Ameritrade, or one of the other brokerages, and find out about their on-line training programs and what they require to open a brokerage account. Lastly, google "DRIPS". These are direct investment plans that you can do without a broker. Best of luck to you. Start reading and saving!

Answer 4

You can easily invest $50 into stocks and make it worth it.  The post about DRIPs is right - I have a ton of DRIPs myself and I wrote an article on it over at my blog (see below).  You DO NOT have to pay commissions in order to invest in stocks.  Especially if you're American, there is no reason that you should be doing that.  Hundreds of U.S. companies let you invest directly with them for no commission charges (some have smaller fees for other things, though).  I know a couple of people who have retired and they've not paid more than $100 in commissions over their life.

Just get started with dividends.  I love them.  They bring in cashflow.  Pick a good solid dividend-payer like JNJ or PG.  I can tell you more elsewhere about how to get started.  (And anyone else, too - feel free to give me a shout on Digg or Stumble, or just stop by my blog)

MoneyEnergy

http://www.getmoneyenergy.com

Answer 5

I think you should learn a bit about investing and the various approaches before jumping into it. You learn about some investment skills, techniques and how to evalute reports, then you get an account with a broker. Or you could buy index funds or mutual funds. But 50 dollars is not enough, so you can either save it up or get more money before you start investing. Anyways you are starting young and can have a whole lifetime of good investment habits in front of you. Good luck and all the best! Don't be discouraged with your initially small sum!

Answer 6

You will never make any money at all on a $50 investment.  Even the cheaper brokerages have $7 commissions.  So with your $50, you could buy one share of stock at $43.  Even if it doubled (not particularly likely), you would have a $86 investment.  If you want to sell it, you would have $79 cash.  Sou you would only make $29, which definitely would not even be worth the effort that you would have to put in.  And on top of that, the $29 would be taxed!

And that's even assuming that you can find a brokerage house that will let you open an account with only $50, which could be tough.

Try to save up at least a few hundred dollars.  Until then, save up for your investment in a savings account like ING Direct.

Answer 7

At $50 you are wasting your time with shares, this will only cover the cost of buying and maybe selling the shares for the brokerage fee. Your probably best putting small amounts like this in a high interest account where you cannot touch the money for a year or two and get the best amount of interest - maybe 10% per year.