I'm interested in stocks but i don't know anything!!HELP!?!?

Question

I'm in highschool and i don't think i'll have money for college, so i've been thinking about getting into the stock market. The thing is i have no ieda how it works. If i were to start what should i do? how should i start?How much should i invest. Do i need a bank account? thanks!!

Answer 1

BEFORE you invest anything, please learn the basics about how to read stock charts. It's not that hard once you understand what you are looking for in a stock. I would suggest going to the archived articles at www.investors.com. Brush up on the knowledge there. It has helped me a LOT. There's much more to investing than buying a stock because it's cheap, and HOPING it will go up in price. That old saying about buying low and selling high is BALONEY! Cheap stocks are cheap for a reason... they suck! You want to buy high, and sell higher!!! Read the information in the archives there and learn how to find STRONG, SOLID, PROFITABLE stocks. Best of luck to you, Starting out in the stock market at your age can make you a wealthy person by the time you reach your mid twenties or early thirties :)

Answer 2

One thing to say off the bat-- the stock market can be extremely volatile over short periods of time, and it is possible to lose money investing. The market also doesn't provide miracles--it only goes up about 10% a year, on average--so you can't reasonably expect to double or triple your money in a year on the stock market.

Don't panic about paying for college-- you can take out loans to pay for education and most schools should offer help to students who can't afford the sticker prices colleges slap on themselves.

Over the long term however investing in the stock market is a great way to make money. While paying for college should be your first priority, trying to save a little money to invest is a very good idea.

In order to invest you'll need to open a brokerage account (ameritrade and e-trade are examples) which you can use to buy and sell stocks. Unfortunately some brokerages charge significant fees on small accounts, which can make it somewhat impractical to open accounts with less than a few thousand dollars in them (I think td ameritrade advertises that it doesn't do this, but make sure you read the small print). Once you open an account I'd recommend buying stock in what are called exchange traded funds. These allow you to own a small amount of stock in a large number of companes (which reduces the risk that you'll accidentally put your money into a company that goes bankrupt); and example would be the SPDR ETF which trades under the ticker symbol SPY (a ticker symbol is the code you use to buy and sell a stock.)

Hope that helps. There are a lot of books on investing at any decent bookstore or library. You can also go to investopedia.com for some basic info. Good luck.

Answer 3

When i was in high school i was the only kid reading the wall street journal.You should start to read this everyday it is packed with information.Your parents will have to open a uniform gifts to minors account with your name on it at a brokerage somewhere.Next fund the account with some money.Then buy stock in a oil or electric company because they probably will not go out of business also they usally pay a nice dividend that you could use to purchase more stock through a dividend reinvestment program run by the company you invested in also you will be able to add other money to this program with no costs.Building wealth takes time you can do it.

Answer 4

You need a little education in investing 1st. Get a copy of "Investing for Dummies". Maybe your library has it. If not your book store should. Amazon does for certain. About $12.00.
If you are under 18, you will have to have one of your parents open the brokerage or mutual fund account for you under the uniform gifts to minors act. Easy enough. After that you are ready to go. But remember this. If you pick crummy stocks you are quite likely to wind up with less than when you started. That is not an uncommon occurance. Many beginners attempt to score big. Many wind up scoring a strike out.

Answer 5

You have a great idea. but first read Investing for Dummies, and open up account with an online broker like Trade King so you know what there talking about. Do not open up margin account you can fund it with little cash later on when you have some money you can do wire transfers in cash with no account out side of trade king. If you have little money your going to be in high risk so don't bye for more than 10 cents ashare or you could lose alot. just use good judgement.

Answer 6

Um, if you haven't money for college, how do you have money for stocks? Perhaps you are thinking of buying lottery tickets or wishing upon a star?

Investing is, by IRS definition for the purposes of taxing your gains, something that you sell a year or more after you buy it. The speculations, the trading, that most folks think of for making money on stocks are similar, but more quickly done. It could range from selling a few minutes later or hours or days or weeks later.

A few years ago I took a venture on a no-name penny stock that wanted to make a different kind of vaccine. The avian flu scare took place and an asian country's government contracted with them to help develop medicine. What was selling for a couple of pennies was now selling for a couple of dollars. Trust me, it doesn't happen every day. I still have a couple of losers on my books to remind me--one of them turned a few hundred dollars into a total of $0.00008 (yes, I have the decimals right). Then there was buying Lockheed at $80-something and selling at over a hundred. It isn't guesswork, but with literal thousands of publicly traded companies to choose from, finding the one, and seeing it in opportune time, is kinda close.

You want to make money for college? I've an idea for you from a dormroom a few doors from mine when I went to college. His immigrant parents were very poor, his father died when he was young. His illiterate mother worked hard at menial jobs until she too became sick. He was pushed by his family's need, his two brothers and a sister included. When I met him he was 19 and was making several thousand dollars a month as a part-time salesman. He bought a new car in his second year, paid cash.

Good effort at what you know, or can soon learn, is far better than luck.

Answer 7

Open a brokerage account at Zecco and invest in the ETF DIA.

Top 4 Answerer.

Answer 8

Stocks aren't the answer. You'll be working with too little time and money to build up to what you'll be needing for college.

Investing is for building wealth over time. Plus, Investing is one of those "takes money to make money" situations.

Instead, you should be looking into grants and scholarships offered in your area.

Answer 9

The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham. Plenty of online glossaries to look up terms that look unfamiliar to you while reading the book.

Answer 10

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