How do I start investing in the stock market?
Answer:
Do a lot of research before investing a dime. There are plenty of good web sites to start learning. start with yahoo finance, market watch, motley fool. Also a big help for me is the wall street journal. Start reading it everyday for awhile before making a move. The financial times is a good paper also Check out Barron's weekly paper also. Please do your self a favor and check these out first for awhile. When you start to invest BE SURE TO BE DIVERSIFIED! Hold about 5 stocks and no more that 10 and don't pick more that one speculative stock to stat with. I used Ameritrade and e-trade, Remember your going to have the buying and selling fees, and capital gains when you sell. Learn about these things. As a personal advice I would check out ETF'S their cheaper then mutual funds. Good luck, your going to need that too.
get a stock broker
begin with no-load mutual funds. do that for a year.
youll be ready for some stocks after that
Find a trader, whether its online(e.g. Ameritrade) or through an institutional trader (e.g. merrill lynch). I strongly suggest getting a reliable financial advisor. He or she should guide you in the most prudent way to achieve you short-term or long-term goals.
I read a book by The Motley Fool, and it's good beginning reading material. I also read Investing for Dummies, which was ok.
I would get an online broker. There's a lot of rules that are involved in doing business with them, so I'd search google for possibly a list of independant reviews of available online brokers. There might not be a clear best one. It might depend on which one suits you best.
**Stocks historically have outperformed mutual funds.
I traded on the stock market many years ago, and lost just over £7000.
On hind sight I wish I had invested it instead, it was risky, as a colleague
of mine, was "flying on the seat of his pants", and made £20,000.
Think very carefully first before deciding, and take advice from several
people.
Good luck.
Lain.
A lot of it depends on how much money you will be investing, what your time horizon is, etc. If you don't have much money to invest, I suggest either purchasing mutual funds through your bank or an online account such as E*Trade, which is really easy to get set up. You can also look at exchange traded funds (ETF's), which will mimic an index such as the Nasdaq or Dow.
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