The Stock Market?

Question

Hey everyone.

I am currently 20 years old and am thinking about getting into trading. I was wondering if anyone had any tips or pointers that has helped them when they first started? Also if you could tell me what your opinion on trading online is? Any other info would be great. Thanks to everyone who pitches in their 2 cents.

Answer 1

The biggest thing that helped me leading up to when i first invested in the UK stockmarket were these online articles on investing @ US site Fool.com (which is sound advice, no matter what country ur in)
http://www.fool.com/school/basics/basics.htm

The next thing that helped was learning all the terminology used via http://www.investopedia.com

The 3rd thing that helped was reading the biography of Warren Buffet, the greatest ever stockmarket investor:
http://www.salon.com/people/bc/1999/08/31/buffett/
http://beginnersinvest.about.com/cs/warrenbuffett/a/aawarrenbio.htm

Finally, these helped me research companies before placing my money on them:
http://quote.fool.com (US quotes)
http://quote.fool.co.uk (UK quotes)
http://finance.yahoo.com

And trading online is great, as it's cheaper + you don't have to deal directly with greedy brokers.
http://www.sharebuilder.com is a good one for people in the US taking their first steps into trading on the stockmarket

The one big thing to remember is each time you buy or sell a stock, you pay the broker a "commission fee"........... the more times you buy & sell, the more of these fees you pay........ and the more of these fees you pay, the more they eat into any profits made on your shares in the particular company's stock.

The other big thing to remember is larger, more established companies pay out what is called a "dividend" (either once or twice a year), which is where they pay out a chunk of their profit back to investors.......... how much you get depends on how many shares in that company's stock you own, as it's calculated by dividing how much they have to pay out by the number of shares held by investors.... which means the more you own, the more you get paid. For instance, if the dividend payout is 10¢ and you own 4 shares in the stock, then you've earned 40¢ dividend payout.... which is best recommended is put towards buying more of that company's stock, so you're entitled to more dividend money next time it's being paid out.

Answer 2

What do you mean by " much anticipated and predicted crash... of stock market". Were you the one expecting this? Have you ever invested in the markets? If so, have you ever gained much? I do not get the rational for your question! Mr. You need to do some research! I think that today was just another "down" day in the markets caused by a long haul by the housing and credit crisis!

Answer 3

I traded on line for 2 years with nothing but a spreadsheet and $10,000 fake to get a feel for the market and my own talent for turning over gains.

I found that day trading is a wasted effort unless you're buying in large volumes of shares. Along the way I also found some important information that I use now for masking certain companies from my trade lists (I have a list of several dozen items that I use to screen out companies, too much to explain here).

For example, I screen out any company with a fifth letter in their stock symbol until I find out what the symbol means. I screen out any company selling for less than $2 listed on Nasdaq because they're about to be delisted. (Companies trading in this range are okay on the American Exchange because they allow small-cap companies.)

When I look at the balance sheet, I screen out any company with a current ratio less than 1, intangible assets of more than 50% of total assets, equity of less than 50% or negative retained earnings (currently, Microsoft has a substantial "deficit").

Dividends have never made a difference, neither have IPO's or other "trends".

Also, follow the news and get used to what happens to stock prices when all the investing lemmings go into buying frenzies and then a few days later reverse and go into a selling frenzie.

Answer 4

u should have the full knowledge of which company is good or bad

Answer 5

Try www.ny-stock.com, www.nystockexc.com, maybe they can help.