How do you buy stocks?

go to etrade and snoop around their help or FAQ section.

 

Go to Morningstar.com. They have a little free course on the basics of trading. It's pretty informative.

 

Read about buying stocks before you go "buy stocks". Understand the basics of investing before you get yourself into trouble you don't want to be in.

True stories : I was heavy into day-trading back in the late 90's/early 00's. One of the companies I worked at had employees that daytraded most of the day (we were a telecom company - what did we care about work, right?).

A) A guy who had never daytraded a day in his life got caught up in people in our little investment hunting group turning nutty profits. When the market decided to take a downturn, he couldn't sell... he kept saying it was just a dip and the market would come back. Long story short, he ended up losing over $50,000 in about 2-4 months. That was pretty much his savings.

B) Another guy also had just gotten into trading at the same company. One day he asked me "did you buy anything today"? I told him the ticker symbol of a stock I had bought that morning before hours. He said "cool - sounds good". That stock's price doubled that day I believe (I had bought on news alone). He asks me 4 horus later "what do they do"? I told him it was a telecom company dealing in RF devices and built cell tower equipment for cell phone companies. He said something like "oh ok... I bought some of it earlier". I just laughed... you bought a stock you knew absolutely nothing about? He just said "hey man, I only have $1000 in that account and I don't know what I'm doing but you guys seem to be making money right and left, so I figured I'd listen to you". lol. Wow. Crazy times.

 

Enron is a pretty good stock.

 

ya know I did this in a stock simulation

made tons of money.

 

Everybody has man, everybody... with fake money.

Then you put up real money and suddenly you become a bit more conservative. Amazing how your risk/risk aversion changes when playing the real game vs. playing a simulation.

 

my philosophy, if it works in a simulation, it's gotta work in real life.

just a matter of getting it right.

 

conquering worlds works in simulations, dunking on jordan does too

in real life truth be told, it is different

 

http://www.investopedia.com

They have tutorials that range from basic to advanced. They also have a "term of the day" mailing list that is a nice easy to learn some of the abstract concepts about investing.

 

Dartboard.

 

Daytrading is not investing; it is purely speculation.

 

You buy what I tell you to buy, and you learn to like it.

 

To me, there's no real difference between buying 5 shares of a stock over 50, as long as I keep the number of shares relatively consistent with other stock. No way am I doing anything on the level of day trading....

This eventually changes when you use one stock to make back the money you lost from another, but keeping a level head is the most important thing about investing. You can micromanage your way out of gains, and if you're just starting, you definitely will.

 

lol...for some people ;-)

 

my friend...if that were only true...simulations only account for so much

 

I got a guy