I'm interested in stock investments but i don't know how it works..?

i'm still a college student but i'm really interested in stocks. i heard stock investment is one of the investments with high returns.. i want to invest on it but i don't know the rules.. please help..

Unless you have knowledge about a particular company stock, you'd be better off with a mutual fund. Open you an account at a brokerage (like E-Trade or Charles Schwab) with say $500. Purchase something like Excelsior Value & Restructuring Fund and keep adding money to it as you have extra money. I wouldn't suggest you buy individual company stock because you are putting all of your eggs in one basket.

do you have lots of money to invest? if u do, then invest in a mutual fund, like vanguard.

if u dont have lots of money, put it in an online savings acct (hsbcdirect.com) and wait it out until u do. Then set up an auto invest plan.

you should read up on it first. the best book for it is "new market wizards" that's "new market wizards"

Play "lets make a portfolio" and or " how not to get broke in the stock market"

do this as if it was real money then if you screw up you only lose your pride not your money.

What you need to do is to research the companies that you are interested in. Then set up a spread sheet with an initial investment of lets say $10,000 for each company. I know that you don't have that kind of money but pretend that you actually do and "buy the equivelant number of shares" Then on a daily, weekly, monthly basis go back and enter the values of each share as of the average, the closing or the opening price from the stock markets. Be sure to include the cost of the commissions and fees in the mix. If in real life their is a divident paid out then keep track of that . If in real life their is a stock split then the value of each share you purchased will go or up down depend on the split. ie 1 for 3 or 2 for 1. The number of shares you "own" will split and increase or decrease the same way.
At the end of the period lets say 6 six months you will have an idea of what your doing. You can at any time dump or sell the stocks and then reinvest the funds in another company.

Remember that if you have $1,000 dollars and the price of the stock is $100 then you will only have 10 shares. Dividends are paid and if dividends are 25 cents a share you will get $2.50 per dividend pay out. On the other hand if you the price of the share is $10.00 then you will have 100 shares and if the dividend is 10cents per share you will get $10.00 per dividend pay out.

There are many groups out there that have investment clubs, See if you can find one. They will teach you how to read a companies reports, and what to look for.

One additional thought. It will cost you each time you buy or sell a share or a lot stocks per transaction. Then you will always have the different tax consequences with the sale of stock. If you own the shares for less then a year you will have a short term capital gain taxed at I think 35% of the profit if it is long term the percentage is lower. Look at the IRS site to determine the rates www.irs.gov
Let me know how you did after a few weeks or months.

Good Luck
Don

Very simple. Pick something in which you may be interested. Example, Chicos, stock symbol, chs. Type chs in a stock search box. Look at the history of the stock for a given time period, example ,one year. Read what the analyst say about the stock. Set up an account with an on line broker, Ameritrade is good. Buy as many shares as you feel comfortable. Follow the stock daily.
I started in a similar fashion, 40+ yrs. ago and now have seven digits. First purchase was Clorox, $200 worth. Made about $50,000 from that first buy. Secret is discipline and to put the stock into an IRA and reinvest the dividends, called a DRIP account. Dividend Reinvestment Program. Do this with about $5,000 per year and you will be in fat city when you get retirement age.

Stock investments do yeild high returns, but you can also lose a LOT of money very quickly if you don't know what you're doing.

Read everything you can lay hands on about investing. Any book store has walls of books on this.

In particular read "trend Trading - a seven step approach to success" by Daryl Guppy. This book would have saved me thousands if I had found it earlier.

Then start paper trading. You can get tons of stock information, delayed quotes, etc. on Yahoo! finance.

Best of luck.

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