HOW TO BUY STOCKS FOR BEGINNERS AND DUMMIES

Get Started Buying Stocks By Opening A Broker Account

In order to buy stocks you will need to open up an online account with a discount broker. It is easy to do and if you have signed up to almost anything online, you can figure out how to open a stock account.

I use E*Trade for my online broker and I have used them for almost 10 years. I like their easy to understand website that allows me to quickly find all the information I need. They also have a good number of training videos and lots of other material that will help you get started.

However, there are many other brokers you can choose from and I have listed 9 others that you might consider. Each of these charges between $5 and $10 per trade and they are all reliable and safe:

2) Scottrade

3) Fidelity

5) Zecco

7) TradeKing

10) Charles Schwab

How To Pick A Stock To Buy

Once you open your stock account, you need to put money in the account. You can do this by sending a check or by transferring money online from your bank. Either way is okay and the only drawback of the check is that it will take longer.

When the money makes it into your account you can then start buying stocks!

The question is though, which stock or stocks should you buy first?

Unfortunately THAT is the question that only you can answer. It is your money and you must be prepared to make the decisions on how to invest it. You can listen to the stock analysts and pundits but remember, they are only giving their opinion. Listening to them can result in you losing money.

It is best if you start slowly and NEVER put all your money in one stock. Ideally you should have no more than 5% of your money in any one stock but that may be hard to do right away. Your goal should be to find solid companies in different industries to invest in which will effectively reduce your risk to any one business sector.

Stick With It And Keep Investing

It is important that everyone learn how to buy stocks and participate in the market so that they will be able to get bigger returns than they could through investing in CD’s and things that only give you simple interest (which is near 0% right now).

History has shown that stocks are the best place to invest your money. By that I mean that the stock market has given investors the highest return of any other investment vehicle when investing over a long period of time. Even though there have been bad years in the stock market, anyone who has stayed invested through the good times and bad should have done quite well.

Most anyone can figure out how invest in stocks. It certainly doesn’t take a degree or any specialized training to figure out how. The media might make it sound harder than it is but in reality, all it takes is a commitment to learn over the many weeks, months, and years of your investing career.