17 year old with $5,000 to invest. what should i be investing in at this young age, with tons of time?

i have set up an etrade acount, should i be investing in mutual funds, stocks? buying and holding? thanks for help

If you are willing to spend the time, you should definitely invest in stocks, as they have the best historic return. You can learn a lot of great investing strategies and valuation techniques on Investopedia, a website dedicated to investor education. If you have little experience, you may want to put your money in a CD, certificate of deposit, at your bank for a little while until you have a better understanding. Investopedia has a virtual practice account that you can sign up for to practice some of the strategies and find one that consistently works for you. Yahoo! Finance is a great resource for finding all of the numbers and information that you will need when doing research. I have included the links to both, as I would strongly urge you to learn how to invest before jumping in and doing it, as without education, it is little more than gambling. Once you have a strategy, take your money out of the bank, when your CD matures, and put it into the brokerage account and start making money. If you already have a good understanding of the markets, feel free to check out my blog which has my stock picks, as well as short write-ups on each, which might be a great place to start your research. Just some thoughts, I hope they help.

Best of luck getting started!

Brendan Prewitt

Your safest bet is mutual funds. Do you want to be the tortoise or the hare??? Don't expect huge payouts fast... take your time because time is on your side. Stay with contributing to the funds monthly or yearly or whatever and don't get distracted by the market ups and downs.

If I were you I would buy a rental property. You need help finding a property that will make you a profit or at least break even. There are a lot of places where you can get a property for 40-50K that rents cover the costs. With the down turn in the Real estate market good buys are available. Gold is probably a good buy if the economy keeps going down. But the best thing to remember is Diversify. Hard to do with only 5K.

Buy some decent books about economics, finance, and management. Put the rest in a CD or treasury bond and forget about them until you're 30.

Your first option should be to fund fully a retirement account.

If you have done this, or you wish to wait on the retirement fund, then one of the best things you can do is open a DRIP Plan.

They are seldom talked about because brokers make very little money when they suggest them. Yet, they have proven to be one of the best, if not the best, long-term strategy on Wall Street.

The best part is you get solid annual returns from well-known, safe Blue Chip companies like: McDonalds, General Electric, Pfizer, Walmart, US Bancorp.......etc........

They are inexpensive to start and maintain.

They are perfect for small investors, as well as big investors. They are safe and allow you to not care about whether the market is going up or down.

First off, congratulations on being wise enough to be worried about investing at such a young age.

If I were in your shoes I would invest in a DRIP Plan. In my opinion there is nothing that will give you the long-term returns that these plans will.

Hello,
Don't invest in stocks. The risk to lose your money is too high.
I have invested in my friend's business and now I am getting guaranteed 40% annual interest. You may email me for more information (check my profile).
Don't invest in stocks. It's too risky.

I wish you success!