Never bought stock?

Question

I am 20 years old and I would like to start buying stock to make money and for my money to grow! Where should I start and where should I go

Answer 1

What companies do you like? What would like to be a part of? If your favorite stores are parts of chains, it is likely that they have publicly listed stock, you can buy into them and let their business growth grow your money.

Generally, for folks new to stocks, you need to realize the difference between what you are wanting to do, along with what you know how to do (which you admit isn't much), and what everyone else is talking about doing. A lot of stock talk is about trading, about speculating. Speculations are not making money grow. Speculations are short term and very risky, so you won't make money doing that if you don't know what you are doing. Investing is a longer term project.

Investing is putting your money up to buy a stock and then just leaving it alone. You will hear an expression "buy low and sell high", but if you are investing, when the price is lower than when you first bought into that company, then that is the low for you to buy more (it averages down the cost-basis, what you will be taxed on when you do decide to sell it is what your sale proceeds after the cost is subtracted, assuming it is more than what you paid in for it).

May I suggest that you start with something big and obvious. You can buy into all of the stocks of the Dow Jones Industrial averages, the stuff that often is reported first when talking about the American stock experiences that business day. The symbol DIA is stock in an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) that just buys those stocks for people who buy that ETF stock from their brokers. Another one is SPY, an ETF that buys into the Standard & Poors 500. These two, commonly referred to as Diamonds and Spyders, cover the two biggest American stock benchmarks, the next most important is QQQQ (I keep forgetting if it is 3 Qs or 4 Qs), this buys into all the stocks on the NASDAQ stock exchange, mostly technical companies, so if you hear someone saying "the tech stocks" were up or down, they usually mean these. Another ETF that is worth considering, well maybe two, is NY, the largest (by market capitalization, the number of shares times the most recent price of the stock) 100 stocks on the New York Stock Exchange, and maybe look at PXN, an ETF by a company called powershares (which along with a company called ishares, which did NY, and these do a lot of ETFs). PXN buys into the major companies doing nanotechnology (they are making or inventing some really wild products that will change a lot of things in our future), so in the long run, these companies will essentially be the next technological revolution, so it is worth a good look at some time.

Take it easy. Remember, most of the advise you will get is things like Lockheed (LMT) is about to announce its earnings and if it is big then the stock will go up--this is trading, this is speculation, because you will be expected to sell it after the news grows old and the stock drops a bit. But if you hear that Lockheed builds missiles and both Japan and South Korea are buying a bunch of missiles for several years to match the estimated 10,000 that North Korea has--buying into that for the long-run of its business growth is investing.

Answer 2

I would recommend the following steps:

* Start making and tracking stock portfolios on a site like Yahoo Finance, or one of its competitors (I use Yahoo). It's free, fun, and you can learn a lot.
* Don't think about investing real money until you FIRMLY understand two things: (1) that it's usually worthless to do anything other than thinking in the long-term, and (2) that most of the ups and downs of the stock market are random and unpredictable. The book I mention below will help on these points.
* Open an account with an online brokerage. I use TD Ameritrade and I have been very happy with them; Scottrade is another big player, but I don't know as much about them.
* Considering opening a Roth IRA. You can freely trade stocks in a Roth IRA without being taxed, which makes recordkeeping a lot easier for a beginner.
* Only invest money that you don't need (that is, that you can afford to lose).
* When you only have a small amount of money, buy a mutual fund. Consider buying an index fund; some trade on the exchange openly--these ones often have very low expenditures. An example of such funds is SPY, which is an index fund for the S&P 500 index. You can also look at closed-end funds, which sometimes trade at a discount (which you will learn what it means, but it can be beneficial if you buy them when they are at a discount).
* Consider finding a fee-based financial advisor. It's hard to be an expert at this stuff; professionals aren't perfect but they at least have firmly mastered the basics of how things work, which you probably haven't. Never, under any circumstances, use a comission-based financial advisor: these people do not have the right incentives in place to make the best decisions for you.
* If you want a book, and are only going to read one, I would recommend: "A Random Walk down Wall Street" by Burton G. Malkiel.

Most importantly, good luck, and have fun!

Answer 3

Whew! A lot of answers ...I hope you get this far, then simply go to msn and read and learn at your own pace:
http://moneycentral.msn.com/beginnerguide.asp?page=introduction
The IRA's that some people might mention are great ideas, but at 20 years old, you don't want to lock uo ALL your money for 40 years.....first few years try to get a little money into an investment account AND an IRA.....that investment money you may find another use for in just 5, 6 or 7 years...like a home or some income property ( as good an investment as any market or fund !!)
A place like E-trade should be able to help you , too.
Good luck....grow some money !!

Answer 4

Open up an Ameritrade or Scottrade account. Fund your account and you are ready to start buying stocks. Another good thing is that you can set it up to have them automatically take whatever you can afford a month directly from your bank account to your Ameritrade account.

Buy this book: The 100 Best Stocks You Can Buy 2007 by John Slatter. It's a great book and has a great beginning section for new investors along with investment strategies. The books is also updated every year. It's in its 10th year. You can get this book for under $10 on Amazon.

Good Luck and email me if you have any questions!!

Answer 5

ok, forex, you say the stock market is at an all time high so don't invest in it, let me guess-invest in forex right?
the stock market has risen an average of over 10% for the last 80 years, so it is almost always at an all time high, so does this mean that no one should ever invest in stocks

to answer the original question, you are new, start a mutual fund at a good no load company like fidelity,troweprice,vanguard,or many others, just pick a decent fund and have easy investing,let a pro pick the stocks for you

if you must do your own stocks, at least invest for a while and learn before you do it, read some books

Answer 6

First of all, you need to decide whether you want to invest the money yourself or have a broker inchoose your investments for you. Either way you need to do some homework about where your money can be put.

Second, I can judge by your mad black face that you need to calm down and think about the idea of even putting money into stocks at all right now. The domestic stock market is at an all time high and can easily fall right after you start putting money in it. If you want to make the most of your investments, then you should consider putting money in at the right time.

Answer 7

If you're convinced you want to invest in individual stocks and not mutual funds, you might want to start out with direct purchase and dividend reinvestment plans. These plans allow you to buy stock directly from the companies (often without paying any fees). You can also reinvest all dividends at no or low cost.

Here are some resources I would highly recommend for anyone interested in these plans:

http://financialrevolution.blogspot.com/2005_12_01_financialrevolution_archive.html#113480308260653086
http://www.dripcentral.com/
http://www.fool.com/news/commentary/2004/commentary04092001.htm
http://invest-faq.com/articles/trade-drips.html

If you do invest in individual stocks, whether through a DRIP or conventional method, remember to diversify.

Answer 8

Educate yourself before you start.

An excellent book to read is Andrew Tobias' "The Only Investment Guide You WIll Ever Need."

In spite of its grandeous name it is a small, easy to read and understand book that lives up to its name.

Also subscribe to financial magazines or newspapers. Investors Business Daily, The Wall Street Journal and Forbes are great resources.

Until you learn about what you are doing invest in a no-load, low cost index fund like those offered by Vanguard.