How can I be a investor?

Question

I want to be a investor!

How can I start?

Answer 1

It is actually much simpler than you might think. Think mutual funds. Very easy way to become an investor. Here are a few links to some of my favorite mutual fund companies.

For someone with not too much money to invest all at one time:

http://www.americanfunds.com/default-home.htm

$250 to begin and $25 additions. My favorite is AMECX. An income fund that acts like a growth fund. Has almost 2 million people invested in it. It does however carry a 5.75% sales charge but that is made up by very low expense ratio.

http://www.troweprice.com/common/index3/0,6549,lnp=-1&cg=910&pgid=7132,00.html?src=Mflanding&scn=Select_Fund_By_Category&origins=prospect

A super selection of mutual funds. These have no front end sales charge but do require a larger initial investment. $2500 and $100 subsequent investments. Only $1000 in an IRA account.

Regretably, their internet site leave something to be desired.

http://personal.fidelity.com/products/funds/funds_frame.shtml.cvsr

Again lots of funds to choose from. Their initial investment is again $2500 but subsequent are somewhat higher $250. That is somewhat of an impediment for someone wishing to add $100 at a time to an account, but they do have an automatic investment option at $100.

Now for the final mutual fund family. This company invests only in small cap stocks. But they do a darn good job at it.

http://www.roycefunds.com/funds/index.asp?

$2500 minimum investment. and $100 subsequent investments.


Here is how you proceed. You check out each of the funds. Check their expense ratios. Check out their history. Check out how often the churn their holdings (the more churn, the higher your realized capital gains--bad). Find the ones you like. Download the application and prospectus. Read the prospectus, fill out the application, mail it with a check to the fund and you are in business.

How is that for ease of investment?

Answer 2

Well, you will need to save up some money and then open an online investing account with a broker, like Scottrade. You can learn about investing at 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 read posts on investing from the best traders, as well as share your own investing ideas. There is a charting feature, so you can see how your portfolio performs compared to the S&P 500. Also, you can create your own "group" so that you can see how you are doing compared to your friends.

Here are this month's best traders:

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

Good luck.

Answer 3

First thing you will need to do (since investing is a very broad term and very complex) is decide what your goals are. Certain investments are easy (like mutual funds) and some are more difficult (like pre-initial public offerings). Some are risky (like smal cap linitial public offerings) and others are less risky (like putting your money in the bank, also investing). Then there is foreign exchange and futures, commodities and the list goes on and on and on...
Once you know what you want to achieve you are able to talk to someone like a financial planner to help you! Because there are literaly hundreds of thousands of products to invest in there is no way you can know what it is good to invest in by yourself. Sure you can choose an investment class like stocks and learn all there is to learn about stocks and then ONLY invest in stocks. You can be very sucessful doing that, but I would advise you to get someone (perhaps a bank advisor) to help you decide which investments will help you reach your goals and that fit your personality! Then you can specialise in that and learn all there is to learn about that investment class.
Once you have done that you will need to make a plan so that you know how you are going to invest to make sure that you reach your goal! Finaly, and this is very important, you have to follow to your plan. If you do not do this you cannot achieve your goals (unless you are very lucky...).
What I have told you so far is the difficult part, the actual investing and getting started is not so difficult as the other answers demonstrate, but without the goal and plan you will not be as sucessful as you CAN be!!

Good luck and don't forget to have fun. Money/investing and life is like a game of monopoly and that is a lot of fun too :-)

Answer 4

Call Smith Barney, they will link you up with an advisor, and have money automatically taken out of your checking account monthly. You should start a Roth IRA.

Answer 5

I visited CONVERGYS OFFICE., which gives advices to investors that can spend lesser than any approach. click it in website.