I want to know about getting started with stock?

Question

I want to spend a very small amount on stock to get started. Where can I do this? Is a small amount worth messing with? Email or IM if you know alot about this.

Answer 1

I use Scottrade, which only charges $7 to make a trade (sale or purchase, stocks are not "round trip") and it had a $500 minimum when I started. A friend of mine wanted a cheap way to buy and I steered him to Sharebuilder. The broker fee is only $4, but the idea is to make investments each month, check their automatic investing option.

As for what to invest in, what are you interested in? Is your favorite store or product brand or some particular industry or fad? May I suggest an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF). My favorites are with Ishares, but Powershares has some too. You've heard of the Dow Jones averages? Suppose you invested in them--the whole thing--that is in an ETF called Diamonds (symbol is DIA) and you will own, in every share, the Dow Jones Industrials Averages stocks. Everytime you hear the market report you will know how that investment has grown or fallen in market value. There are a couple of other common groups like that: SPDR (commonly called spiders) for the Standard & Poors 500 or QQQ (I keep forgetting whether it was three Qs or four) for a composite of the NASDAQ exchange, which is usually fairly technical companies.

Or you can go, again, for individual stocks. Try the Businessweek stock screener (registration is free) and you can use their portfolio feature to run a trial balloon and see how things play out. They give really great information on a wide range of companies. Play with it and see what floats your boat. I went to the S&P500 scoreboard, picked the top ten profitable companies and the batch is up over 30 percent in a little over half a year.

Take your time. Go with what is comfortable. Be patient. Good luck.

Answer 2

First I would start to read the Financial papers. Subscribe to a good financial paper and read a little from it every day. You will become familiar with vocabulary/ business people/businesses etc. These papers always have a stock list with the name of the stock, the price and if it has gone up or down. Look at that over a period of 3 months or so and you have an idea what is popular and what is not. Before you invest money, you have to say to yourself, if I lose all of it, would I care. If your answer is, no. Start buying stock. If your answer is, yes. Do not buy stock. If you want to buy stock, go to a securities company and talk to someone or telephone and talk to someone. If you are a small buyer, remember the stock company takes a percentage of your profit and there is tax to pay, so you wouldn't make a fortune

Answer 3

The best place to start is Scottrade.com I think the minimum investment may be $250 or $500.

For investing ideas, the first thing to do is see what the best traders are buying and selling and why. This is the idea behind the site http://www.top10traders.com - this is a free site that lets you create a portfolio of stocks with $100,000 in "play" money. Each day the site ranks the best performing portfolios, so you can see how your picks perform compared to other investors. You can also read posts on investing from the best traders, as well as share your own investing ideas.

Here are this month's best traders:

http://www.top10traders.com/Top10Standings.aspx

Good luck!

Answer 4

Graham once said that it's best to start by determining whether you're Investing or Speculating. They are 2 completely different roads. It's not that speculating is always bad and investing is always good. There is intelligent speculation just as there is intelligent investing.

If you're speculating, then as you're starting with small amount, options are probably a better choice as they're much cheaper although their risk is higher than stocks.

If you're investing, and are planning on investing small amounts from your income REGULARLY, you could look into www.sharebuilder.com.

Another thing to look at is to buy ETFs like DIA or SPY. But if your investment is really small, the commission will really hurt you, even with the lowest internet brokerage commission (10 dollars or so).

An illustration is that if you're investing 100 dollar then the 10 dollar commission will be 10% from your investment. But if you're investing 1000 dollar, the 10 dollar commission will only be 1%.

I hope that helps.

Answer 5

If you would like to spend a very small amount of money on investing, lets say USD300, i would then suggets that you invest in foreign exchange trading than stocks.

A good website to learn more about foreign exchange trading is www.fxcm.com ( Forex Capital Markets LLC ). Take a tour of the website and explore. Try the free demo account and explore your own investment ideas with no actual risk of loss.

With foreign exchange trading you can have more leverage, more staying power and more access to the market. My personal favourite is the mini foreign exchange or mini fx as most people call them. All i need is USD50 to open a 1 lot position. The average daily movement in foreign exchange ranges from 100 points to 1000 points or more depending on the currency pair. For me i like to trade the Bristish Pound against the US Dollar ( GBP/USD ). The movements in the GBP/USD is fantastic. For a well inform and experience investor to make USD100 a day investing in GBP/USD is possible. Take a look at the King of the Mini Contest on the www.fxcm.com website. Click the contest winners for October 2006. The winner was an investor from China who made USD4000 in 1 month from his initial investment of USD1000. Take a look at his trading record and see how the money was made. The above is possible with due research and investment skills.

More websites on foreign exchange trading are as follows : -

www.fxcm.com
www.fxcmtr.com
www.dailyfx.com
www.propfx.com
www.fxcmmanagefunds.com
www.fxstreet.com
www.fxweek.com

Best wishes and happy investing !

Yours sincerely,
Ariff Shah

Answer 6

I am happy with sharebuilder, it's for the small investor.
As far as stocks, start looking at a nice growth stock that pays a nice yield.

http://www.sharebuilder.com/

Answer 7

Hi, i suggest a great site with plenty of Issues related to your Investing and everything around it. it also provide clear and accurate answer to many common questions.

http://investing.sitesled.com/

I am sure that you can get your answers in this website.

Good Luck and Best Wishes!

Answer 8

Sure. Here is a great discount broker:
http://www.dpbolvw.net/click-2072483-10441335

Answer 9

strat with mutual fund

learn more thr ebooks on 4shared.com

try technical analysis on aptistock freeware

Answer 10

TradeKing.