Stock Market

I can answer your question in three words: index mutual funds.

Read this: 60-Second Guide to Index Investing

simulator.investopedia.com

I'm interested as well and started playing with this a few days ago. Truth is I have wanted to start trading for years now, but I still lack the funds to do so.

I've held mutual funds with Morgan Stanley for about 3 years now. I tossed in all of the money I made while I was over in Iraq and let it sit. I gained about 40% on my investment. That's not bad at all for not looking at it for 3 years. If you are in that mentality where you don't want to keep track of your funds all of the time, buy Mutual Funds.

The problem that I've had in the past few months was that I really wanted to take control of my money to earn a better return. I mean, face it, a 40% gain on just letting the funds sit there isn't bad, but it could have been a lot better for a duration of 3 years (or, to be fair, a lot worse).

So, in the past month I started to act.

I started thinking about what I was looking for in an Online broker.

1) Affordable Commision
2) The ability to transfer funds from my bank account to the broker account.
3) No Account Serivce Fees
4) No Activity Fee (Hey, I'm a student, I can't promise that I'll make trades)
5) A good, solid, trading platform

I thought about E*Trade, TDAmeritrade, Scottrade and Schwab.

I ended up going with Scottrade (and if you do, let me know because if you add me for referring you we both get 3 free trades).

The things I like about Scottrade: $7 commision for stock purchase, I can transfer funds from my checking to my scottrade account, there isnt any activity fee (you could just let your account sit), there are no ASF's, and I find that the trading platform is really nice. On top of that, you can open an account for $500. NO cancellation/transfer fee! (I paid $150 to cancel my morgan stanley account!)

E*Trade, The commision blew it for me. I can't pay 12.95 a trade.

Schwab was really expensive on commision

TDAmeritrade, $10 a trade, they give you $100 for opening an account, and they give you 45 free trades for your first month, sounds good? Yeah, it does. The Killers, I couldn't experience the trading platform first hand. It cost $50 to cancel/transfer your account. They hardly have any branches around the states. There is no way I'd make use of the 45 free trades in the first month.

I want something that I can use for awhile. The $10 would have eventually taken the free $100 they gave me. I'd be better of with the $7 scottrade.

So, if you're learning, I'd go with Scottrade. You don't lose anything if you decide, "Hey, whoah, this isn't for me..."

That said...

Stock Investing is some work. To be good and to create the wealth that you are after, prepare to do some work! You need to really study the companies you are interested in. Read the financial statements, read the latest buzz and stay on top of what they are doing. Good sites for doing this -> www.morningstar.com, finance.yahoo.com.

Buy and Hold is typically what you hear. The better mentality, Buy and Homework. Your portfolio should consist of a min of 5 companies, each in different sectors. You should max at 10. Anything more than that would be a LOT of work!

There is a lot more that I just keep rambling about. Contact me on AIM (aim marine) if you have any specific questions or if you end up liking Scottrade.

Take care!

Morningstar.com is a pretty good website. When you go on there, follow down the left side and click on "Learn". From there, click "Stock Investing Courses". Go through 100 and any others you are interested in.

Also, check out channel CNBC at 10p.m CST. Watch the show, "Mad Money". The guy has some crazy energy, but he is a pretty good fellow to listen too. He isn't an investment god or anything, but he makes you aware of companies that you wouldn't have been aware of. He has also written a couple of books, his latest is here

I've bought it. It's pretty good at explaining the stock market, looking at companies financially, the methods he uses when he does analysis on a company, and other things.

I haven't heard of index mutual funds before, I may look into that.

I think I may start by playing around with that simulator, I was kinda wondering if something like that was available.

I had seen an advertisement for Scottrade on Yahoo, sounds like it may be the way to go (I'll let you know if I do ildave1). Morningstar looks like a good site, I'll definately go through those lessons.

Thanks

If you have any ?'s, don't hesitate to throw me over a message. Good luck!

Ameritrade has a solid, professional, sleek web trading platform: http://www.seancoon.org/wp-content/postimages/ameritrade_trading_ux_large.gif

I've been having an empty account for over a year and I didn't get the annual maintenances fee applied nor are they doing anything about my $2000 minimum balance.

If you want to try Ameritrade, they require a $2000 initial investment, but you're not really paying anything because they just hold the money for you.

Index mutual funds have a lower ROI than individual volatile stocks.

Buy a well tested stock like MSFT, GOOG, JNPR, KHLS (Khol's stores ?), KMART, CISCO networks.

Ameritrade looks pretty straight forward to use, and it's a name I've at least heard of before, but $2000 start up is a bit much for me right now, 500 is more what I was looking at. I realize I won't be making a lot of money anytime soon investing only 500 dollars, but I was thinking mostly to get my feet wet and see if it's something I'd really be interested in doing.

Obviously buy shares in Microsoft. There's a rumour they're going to launch a new OS soon...

I have an Ameritrade account and I love it. Simple and easy to use. Back when I opened my account there was no minimum fee but I guess that's changed. I started in the same position as you; $500 to blow and I wanted to try my luck at stocks, so I began trading various tech stocks, sometimes making 2 or 3 trades per day. In the end after about 4 months I lost about 15% due to the tech bubble burst but I'd say that's not too bad after making about 50 trades at $8 a pop. I was a madman.

Nowadays I'm playing it safe with small investments in a mutual fund and an index mutual fund. For long term growth, index mutual funds kick ass and I will continue pouring money into them.

My advice to you is... $500 isn't that much in the long run, so have some fun with it. Buy up some individual company you like and think will go up. MSFT (Microsoft) and INTC (Intel) are good. The thing is these are pretty safe investments that you know will go up in the long run, but as stocks always do, they will have a lot of day-to-day variance in performance, which is fun to watch when you're just starting to invest. Mutual funds are boring as hell.

Ameritrade's price actually went DOWN to $10. It used to be $12.

I have an account with them and recommend it.

You may also consider Exchange Traded Funds (ETF's) as an investment option. They are basically mutual funds but trade like a normal stock.

microsoft is actually not that great of a stock, contrary to popular belief. a better option would be to invest in the blue chip mutual funds. and always remember the golden rule of buy low, sell high :)

Start a stock market spam ring and it's easy. But don't follow other people's spam stock market tips. The stocks do go up becasue of the spam, but you have to buy before everyone gets the spam.