Invest Money?????

im 15 and was wanting to start investing money. I have always heard to start young and this i what i was planning. Can i buy into bonds/stocks? Whats the difference between the two and how much can i yield?

Dear Jordan:

This is indeed a very wise thing to do. You can start investing at 15, though you'll need your parents to open a custodial account for you (ie just drag one of them to a computer.) I've included a quick and dirty guide to getting started in the stock market below. Anyway:

Stocks: A share of stock is a partial ownership stake in a company. For example if you own one share of Apple stock you own approximately one 870 millionth of Apple Inc, as Apple has 870 million shares outstanding. This is valuable because, as an owner of Apple, you are entitled to have 1/870 millionth of the money Apple makes either be given to you or reinvested by the company in a way that makes your ownership stake in Apple Inc more valuable. (I also really like Apple at its current price.)

Bonds: A loan you make to a corporation/government etc. Generally you give then a set amount of money up front, and they pay you a fee every year for a set period of time and ten return your original investment to you. You can also buy a pre-existing bond from someone else.

Bonds are safer and less volatile than stocks, but over long periods of time they make less money. (Risk vs reward is a tradeoff you always have to deal with in investing.)

You can find a lot of how to books on investing in any library or bookstore. Also try investopedia.com or morningstar.com.

And now for the quick and dirty guide:

Getting started in the stock market is actually very easy.

1) Open a brokerage account.

Check out a broker called Zecco (www.zecco.com). The company doesn鈥檛 charge a fee to buy or sell stock, doesn鈥檛 have a minimum balance, and won鈥檛 charge you a fee just for having an account open. Tradeking (www.tradeking.com) and Scottrade (www.scottrade.com) are other options.

2) Buy shares in an exchange traded fund. These are basically mutual funds that trade on the stock market, effectively allowing you to own a little stock in a large number of companies with a single trade. Two prominent examples are the iShares fund (IVV) and the SPDR fund (SPY) both of which hold all 500 stocks in the S&P 500 (a listing of the main US stocks). Both funds have very low costs and should track the performance of the stock market closely.

3) Sit back, relax and do nothing. The stock market averages a 10-12% return over long periods of time. Over 30 years an investment growing at 12% a year will increase 30 times (ie a $1,000 investment will be worth just under $30,000). Just keep adding more cash to your account whenever you can and don鈥檛 panic if the market drops a bit.

You can also look into buying individual stocks, but either of these funds will make a great core holding.

15 years old? I wish I had your ambition to do this when I was 15. Anyway, save your money in your local bank. You can open a brokerage account with a thousand. I suggest going to Vanguard.com and get yourself an education. Very informative, great customer service. You can get the yield info you want there too, but bonds will generally give you 4-6% taxable (so you net 3-4 depending on tax bracket) and stocks, historically are in the 8-10% range (but only in the long term-notice what's been going on in the markets lately?) Also, "investing for Dummies" is a easy to read background before you jump in. Good luck, now is a good time to buy...

Invest in Mutual Funds: You should know the meaning of mutual funds, before you choose to invest in mutual funds. These funds are a type of security that can be traded on the stock market, allowing shareholders to buy and sell shares in the funds. The revenue generated by purchase of shares is used by mutual fund manager to buy more shares of specific stocks, bonds, and other market securities and money market instruments.
http://debts-to-wealth.com/category/Guid...

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