investment.?

Question

i am a 16 year old. i just got a job at safeway, and i want to go into the stock market. Any advice please?

Answer 1

I see you are interested in investing in the stock markets. Start trading stocks is as simple as opening a trading account with no minimum investment amount and then picking a stock for as low as $100 and then buy. However, that simplicity is truly the wolf beneath the sheep's skin.

There are quite a number of things you need to learn before you can even start thinking of the stock markets ...

1. You need to understand how the stock market works and what it is exactly about.

2. You need to know what are the different styles of trading in stocks and shares.

3. You need to read about why so many people lose their shirts in the stock markets so that you can avoid their mistakes and also decide if this is a risk you want to take.

For all these issues and more, you can read about them from some of the articles that I wrote at http://www.mastersoequity.com/articles.htm

After you are adequately armed with the basic concepts and ideas, you need to know how to find profitable stocks to trade or invest in. You can do that the easy way by subscribing to stock pick services (example http://www.stockpickmaster.com ) or you can learn to use charting tools and softwares to find stocks with parameters that you can pre-define. (example http://worden.mastersoequity.com/).........

Remember, the slogan "Just Do It", Just won't do for the stock markets. If profiting in the stock markets is as simple as buying a single stock , then why are so many people still poor?

After you have all the above mentioned knowledge, you need to ask the following golden questions before you can decide whether a stock is worth buying or not :

1. Why are you of the opinion that this stock will rise?

2. Is your opinion valid in the first place?

3. When are you expecting it to rise? Can you hold on for that period of time or longer?

4. What is your expected entry price? After what price would your expected profit margin be too thin to enter upon?

5. Where is your expected stop loss point? What is your stop loss point based on? Where will you tell yourself that it is time to take a loss and get out?

6. Where is your expected profit taking point? What is your profit taking point based on?

7. Does the way you are buying the stock allow you to hold on until your expected profit taking point?

8. How much of your money should you dedicate to this one trade?

9. What is the level of primary, secondary and idiosyncratic risk you are undertaking when deciding how much of your fund to use?

10. What is your cashflow need? Does your cashflow needs allow you to hold the full lifetime of the stock?

After you are able to answer all these questions confidently, THEN you are ready to... PAPER TRADE your stock strategy. Yes, even at this point, you are NOT READY to trade for real. You should trade on PAPER for at least 6 months and become consistently successful BEFORE you take your stock strategy into real life.

Then.. you are ready to start... but there is still no guarantee of success as paper trading is very different from real trading. You will need another maybe 1 year or 2 trading very little money and be consistently successful BEFORE you are ready to increase your stakes.


So, as you can see, success in the stock markets is not easy at all the the less knowledge you have, the more risk you undertake. I lost hundreds of thousands in the stock markets before I become successful.

Take heed and good luck.


All in all, investment and trading is a lifelong education and non stop learning. No one is ever done learning and catching up with changes in the markets.

If you care to read about how I went from completely broke to retired millionaire trading stocks and options by 28 years old, you can go to http://www.mastersoequity.com/


In conclusion, what I am saying here is that trading stocks and investing for profit is a professional game that takes years and a lot of money to learn, so it is not something that someone in need of college fees should do ... now.... but you should certainly start to learn about it right now.

Hope these information helps.


http://www.optiontradingpedia.com/

http://www.mastersoequity.com/

.

Answer 2

The best way for a beginner to be in the market is by buying an index fund. This is a fund that seeks to match the performance of a bundle of stocks. Indexes are usually based on the Total Stock Market, the S&P 500, the Russell 3000 or some other well known index.

The big advantage is that by owning an index fund, your money is spread out over hundreds of different stocks, not just concentrated in one. If you own a single stock and it goes up, you make money; but if it goes down you lose. With an index, if one stock goes up and another goes down, you come out even. In other words, you spread the risk.

Index funds ALWAYS out-perform individual stocks over the long term (10 or more years).

The best way to get into indexed funds is through a company like Vanguard http://www.vanguard.com. However, you typically need $3000 to start an IRA account. If you don't have that yet, the first thing to do is to open a high interest saving account (see the Orange account from ING.com) and then save your money in there until you get to $3000. Once you have that, go to Vanguard's site and open a ROTH IRA.

Answer 3

There was (actually, I think he's still around) a famous investment innovator named John Bogle who wrote a few books (Common Sense on Mutual Funds, Common Sense Investing, and others) where he makes an interesting observation. Anyone who knows probabilities and casino-style gambling knows that in the long run, rare, if not impossible, is the person who consistently beats the casino--the odds are simply against you. Bogle felt that while it is abundantly clear that the general stock market beats bank interest for growth and earnings, picking stocks is like picking a bet at a casino. Sometimes you win, a lot of times you don't. So Bogle's idea was to help people ride out the swings by picking areas (called sectors or industries) that were active and growing, but spread your money across a big bunch of companies in that sector. If people are buying companies that make or sell tires, for instance (which has been big this year), then buy a broad basket (actually, there aren't a lot of players in this specific example in tires. While some go up, some may go down, but the average of the bunch is what you are riding on. Similarly, aluminum companies are on a tear right now and coal companies had but are about to fall out of the top lists. These are things that you learn from the business sections of the news websites or magazines likely found in your library of Businessweek, Fortune, or Forbes. But you don't have to be so specific, you can go to broader lists like the Dow Jones Industrials or the Standard & Poors 500.

In all of these, you don't have to personally pick out a few dozen or several hundred companies, and you likely couldn't afford (as neither can most of the rest of us) to buy into them individually. That is what Bogle founded the Vanguard mutual funds for, or Templeton, or a bunch of others likewise did. There is still another way to get into all of those on the cheap and easy, ready for a small monthly (or quarterly or annual) pay-in plan--they are called exchange traded funds (ETFs) and they don't have active managers who buy and sell the baskets of stocks, ostensibly to gain some advantage for the mutual fund stockholders, they have a simple list and buy a fairly simple list. The low management means low expense costs. You could buy them like stocks: DIA is the symbol for an ETF that simply buys the Dow Jones Industrials; SPY is the S&P500, NY is the 100 biggest companies on the New York Stock Exchange, etc.

There is this nice little brokerage company that you can get to online and arrange a periodic investment plan, and they don't cost much, and that link is below as well. May I suggest you look into a little ETF from another company called Powershares, PXN. They invest in the biggest players in the next 'big thing'--nanotechnology. Some of the stuff coming out is simply amazing. You can get into it while it is cheap.

One more thing, what I'm talking about is investing. This isn't trading, so you don't need to worry that the price for something like this is falling in the marketplace, these prices flop all around anyway. Since you will be buying again next month, think of a down turn as getting it on the cheap. Actually, it is averaging down your cost for the stocks (called dollar cost averaging) and can be very beneficial in the long run--and you have lots of time. Good luck (and don't get greedy or fall for stories that make you greedy, okay?)

Answer 4

Hopefully I can be of great to you since I was in a similar position as you are. I began trading last May (06) with $1,500 after just turning 17. I have periodically added much more money every few months from CDs maturin, selling old stocks and mutual that family had bought for me, as well as saving money from bdays and holidays.

I don't know how knowledgable you are of the market, but I would highly advise you to join one of those online virtual stock trading games before investing your own money. Since you are still in high school, try to take an investments class if one is offered. Personally, I took an investments class in my hs (although not very helpful) and actively participated in virtual stock trading games for 6 months before I traded my own money.

I would recommend you to save as much money as you can for at least 6 months and then open a discount-brokerage account to trade your own money. Try to learn as much as you can by actively following the latest business news as well as participating in virtual stock game to learn how stocks react to different types of news/reports on a company

Be advise that this most likely doesn't work for most people. I've just been passionate about investing since the 4th grade stock game my class played.

If you have any questions feel free to message me.

Answer 5

college has on no account been a need. yet whilst i glance at job classified ads, do you realize what I many times see? "applicants ought to very own a level/degree...". certainly everybody needs a sturdy good job with an invaluable earnings. the concern is, no longer certainly everybody is keen to do the decrease-paying or ought to I say, 'grimy' jobs. Why? with the aid of fact the pay sucks! it is so straight forward as that. From the way I see it, there are purely 2 solutions to this question. one million) in case you have a particular occupation in strategies which you have interest in and you think of you're able to do nicely in it, with the aid of all means bypass forward. economic help presently are considerable. even with the undeniable fact that, this assertion is debatable too. 2) in case you're uncertain approximately your destiny occupation, have not got the money to take a position, yet have a particular expertise that don't require a school practise, with the aid of all means, do no longer waste some time! bill Gates grew to become right into a dropout yet he had a flair for computing device technologies. he's efficient. Lee Kuan Yew is a Harvard regulation graduate, he serves as a minister now earning hundreds of thousands. he's likewise efficient. So college or no college, it relatively relies upon on what you think of you're able to do and which field you think of you may make the main funds out of. think of earlier you make investments. think of very very intently...

Answer 6

a) DON'T BUY STOCK STOCK ONLY TO TURN AROUND AND SELL IT ... if you do all your money will go to the fees
b) The cheapest place to buy online is sharbuilder.com with only a $4 fee to buy
c) Buy safe "Blue Chip" stocks in the beginning. IBM, Coke, and things like that
d) Check with Safeway to see if they have a program for you to buy stock (often they have a special deal on company stock)
e) You might be able to put money into a ROTH IRA that is tax free
f) You might be able to put money into a ROTH IRA that is tax free (and still buy stock)
g) There are special school savings accounts. Your banker can tell you more but often times you pay extra fees when you invest through a bank rather than an online broker.

Answer 7

I assume you don't have a lot of money to invest. I would stay with mutual funds. If you beat the market picking stocks you are lucky. Excelsior mutual funds let you open and account with $500. Most of their funds have low fees and expenses.

Answer 8

You can open a Scottrade account for only $500.

Buy oil. Ticker: USO