I'd like to get involved in the stock market. Should i open an account online?

I know nothing about the stock market besides now is a good time to pick up shares at a good price. I don't have a lot of money but the little I do have, I'd like to do something with it beside spend foolishly. Should an inexperience person get involved with the market? Is it an easy thing to do?

You should get involved, but I dont think online is a great place for you to start. You can loose a lot of money if you dont know what you are doing.

Start by going to your local broker. If you dont know where to find one, ask around and consider using the one at your bank, most banks have an investment service.

The best way to start investing is to have a plan. It is important to have a diverse portfolio. What this means is not to have all your eggs in one basket. For instance, if you put all your money in one stock, than you have the potential to loose a lot of money if something happens to that company. But if you have your money spread into several companies if one is hurt and one is good it balances out.

Mutual funds are another great way to invest. They usually trade commission free, and basically diversify for you. A mutual fund is most of the time a fund that buys many different stocks.

Remember stocks and mutual funds are not the only thing you should have in your portfolio. You need some safe investments like treasury notes, bills, and bonds. These are almost 100% safe, the only drawback is that they lock your money up.

The last component of your portfolio should be cash and cash equivelents. Like cash, savings accounts, money market accounts etc.

Good Luck. Now is the time to invest, low prices its like buying on sale.

Right now it is very easy to make money if you are patient to keep your money in the market for at least 2 to 3 years. If you want the most brainless way of investing, go with the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000. That's every stock in the US. Here is is right here for no sales charge: https://www.etrade.wallst.com/v1/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?symbol=WFIVX You can see you need $2500 for an initial deposit, and after that you can put in just $100.

I would say you are safe to do investing on your own as long as you diversify.

I really like E*Trade. If you use an online brokerage, make sure you setup online banking through your local bank first. Then sign up for E*Trade. E*Trade's minimum balance is $10,000 for a general investing account. You can also wave the service fee if you have $20,000 in all your E*Trade accounts. E*'Trade has a really nice savings account where all you need is $1 to open. There is no minimum balance. You can also get a checking account and credit card account. The credit card account requires good credit. Their checking accounts are really nice. One checking account has an interest rate of 2.9% APY but requires $5000 minimum balance. The other checking account has no interest. Both checking accounts refund your ATM fees. What's also nice is I use Microsoft Money for my check register instead of writing it down on paper. I still have ot manually type in my purchases with my debit card, but once the transaction clears, I tell Money to update my account, and Money automatically takes the transaction I entered out and adds it to the cleared section. If I want to do that with Wells Fargo, I have to pay them a small monthly fee.

Check this out for fees and expenses:
https://us.etrade.com/e/t/estation/pricing?id=1206030000
Basically, the the investing account , you just need to do one buy order a quarter and they will not charge you any service fees even if your account is under the $10,000 minimum balance.

yep...if you don't want to call ur broker every day for orders. Personally, I think sogotrade is best among all online brokerages. You can get a lot of free trades: about 100 free trades with 500 minimum deposits. It has very good customer services, it also has live help, and you can chat with representatives about any question. After that, only 3 dollar for each trade, pretty sweet when compared with other online brokerages referal code: 453934

Probably not. Online trading requires some knowledge of risk, and downside. It doesn't require an education, better to be lucky. If I knew nothing and was lucky though I might buy into the dividend reinvestment programs (DRiPs) offered by many large companies and just buy and hold shares while I acquired my method and found my comfort zone.

Some stocks might be GE, MO, PFE, MMM, XOM, DD, JNJ. There are many more.

The Market is a great place to make money.

Before you do just remember,

You should have some rules, don't just buy the latest hot stock but have a system that you use to determine if a stock is a good buy or not.

There is a saying and it goes something like this: "Strike while the iron is hot!". Something has been tugging at you to get involved as you sense that you may be able to do something with the market as low as it is right now. You may or may not be right, but you should listen and prepare yourself. That does not mean that you should jump into something without the proper preparation, however.

There are a number of good sources out there that can help you learn the stock market as well as other securities markets, especially the options markets.

Here are my recommendations:

1. Get your news from Yahoo Finance and from Google Finance. It is good to be updated on what is going on with the economy and that knowledge will help you understand your investment decisions later. Also, you will begin to become aware of the lingo of investing. Investing is a whole world unto itself.

2. Get a free stock chart program from MarketBrowser. This is a very good program with several tools that can help you. They have several links to various news and stock information sources. They hold up to 36 charts per worksheet and are fabulous to look at. They also have the capacity to give you currency charts (though I don't use it for this).

3. Learn specific trading strategies. There are some sites that you can go to to learn different trading strategies. I prefer strategies that involve options (stock) and so have included a link to it. The Chicago Board of Options Exchange (CBOE) also has a learning Center which gives you different trade strateiges for options as well as a basic overview of what they are.

4. Get experience with a virtual trader. Before you ever commit real money you need to have a degree of confidence that you can at least place the orders without making a mistake that will cost you money. Thus you have need for a virtual trader. I have been very statisfied with the virtual trader powered by optionsXpress which is fundamentally which I have chosen them as my online broker. I was able to open an account with them without funding it for up to a year before they required me to acutally put money into my account. I was tempted to use another broker but they only gave me a month of time before I had to fund my account.

5. Open an account with an online broker. Why? Because I don't know of any better way to trade stocks and options. I have never used anything else and I don't have to call someone. optionsXpress also has a "live chat" option which allows you to clink a tab and get online assistance immediately. Some people prefer to talk on the phone perhaps, but I like the ability to see the chat I had and refer to it later if I need to.

There is no minimum (I think).

However, CBOE also has a free virtual trader that you can use, and, guess what... it is the same one I use at optionsXpress; that is, optionsXpress powers their virtual trader. There is also a paper trader powered by ThinkorSwim via the CBOE.

6. Develop a plan, or set of plans. This may seem to be out of order but once you have a plan that works for you you may want to really test it. There is a big difference between virtual trading and real trading in that when you virtual trade you know that it isn't real. That's it. That may not seem to effect you and you can pretend to treat it real but when it is finally real then you are really put to the test as the plan you developed is put to the test.

7. Continue your education. Read good books, and maybe invest in education. I spent $25,000 on stock education, which I look back at and wonder if it was worth it. In hind sight I can say "yes" as I would have never known how to get into stocks myself. My $25,000 was a token of my committment to succeed- but I wish I could have found a cheaper way of doing it. I bet Batman wishes his parents weren't killed by bandits (Yes, I know he's not real but suffer through my example) but if they weren't there'd be no Batman. The internet has a great source of education!

Everyone is different. I had access to online coaches, which I used to some extent, but not much. I prefer to learn on my own and there is this fundamental truth- You are always solely responsible for all of your own trades. No one can or will ever accept responsibility for your trade decision.

Bottom Line: Eventually you'll have to open an online account, but you don't have to do that in order to get some experience. Get some knowledge, some experience, some practice, and then you'll see more clearly.

Hope this helps. I wish someone did to me what I am hoping I'm doing for you.

Count yourself among the lucky ones as you can honestly say you did not lose in the markets.Experienced people all lost money. This is a very complex field especially now. What I suggest you do is play the stock market game on paper only with imaginary money. Monopoly money so to speak. Use the same amount of imaginary money you would as if it were real money.Do all the research and study all the stocks you think would be good investments., Do this for one year before you invest a dollar of real money. but set aside the money you would have invested. Don't worry about letting a good one get away. There will be lots of opportunities but you need experience and this method of gaining experience doesn't come with a big cost. One tip If you have a lot of experience in a certain line of business lets say your line of employment be sure to include it in your research Lets say you work in a scrap yard and you know when and why prices rise and fall. You could be more of an expert in a certain field than the so called experts. Good Luck

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