Need help in finance sphere!

The stock-market isn't quite like a horserace. You buy and sell shares of stock rather than "make a bet". And generally these investments are made for the longer term, and appreciation over time, rather than as a quick way to earn money.

You must be over 18 to open any sort of brokerage or trading account in your own name. You say you are a student--are you 18 or over?

Unless you are already knowledgable about the complexities of the stockmarket, particularly in the current economic climate, I'd advise you to do a great deal of reading prior to investing any money.

If you have already done that sort of homework, and you already know which stocks you want to buy, you might try using a stock simulator to test your trading skills. You can find one here.
http://simulator.investopedia.com/#axzz1s3Lyjgho
That same Web site has a great deal of useful information to help you learn more about investing in the market.

Good luck.

You need 2 things to TRY to make money in the market

1. MONEY!

2. Enough MONEY so you can afford lose it!

If you try to make money fast, you risk losing all your money, mainly to trading costs. If you are willing to put money in and not worry about it and not need the money back anytime soon and not care if you lose some of the money in the short run, then you can open an account with as little as $500 at several online brokerage firms. At $500 you will be buying few shares and paying a larger percentage of your $$ to buy and sell.

I learned about the stock market at a weekend seminar by thinkorswim, who is now owned by tdameritrade. I suggest going on thinkorswims site and seeing the classes, both in person and online they have to offer. What I did learn is it's not nearly as complicated as people make out to be, you don't have to have tons of money to start, and the best answer to people who tell you how risky it is, is when you can let them know you've made 22% for far this year. Here's a link to a thread I started a while back, initially in jest, but it became serious starting around page two.

http://able2know.org/topic/129533-2

It annoyed the hell out of me when chumley started spouting off, basically telling me I would be a failure.

The best revenge is I've done remarkedly well, and have no doubt I will continue to do so.

I say to the OP, as farmer and dys said to me...."you go girl" don't let the bastards keep you down.

Just be smart.

My father always told me if I invest any money only do so if I can afford to lose it. I live by that.

Only 22%? I'm up 50% in the first 3 months or at least at the end of March I was, then Apple lost $40 on it's stock price in 2 weeks.

The thing is, if you are buying stocks you have to be prepared for a bumpy ride and willing to lose money at times. Some people can, some can't. If you expect to look at your portfolio every day or even every week and always see it going up then you will be sorely disappointed. You have to be willing to take the ups and downs in stride and accept that sometimes you will lose money and other times you won't make as much as if you had done something else.

If you really want to make money, at the risk of really losing money, then you need to start trading options. Trading options however requires more money to cover margins and losses.

Everyone that wants to teach you how to trade will tell you how much money you can make and will have students that made a lot of money. Their fine print however will always state that those making the money are not typical. The market is always great until you put $30,000 in Lehman, based on the analysts, one week before they go bankrupt. That will happen to every trader at some point or another. They will make a bad investment. That is why you diversify and there will be times when you lose 20-30% of your money as the market does something unexpected.

I don't mean my current portfolio is up 22%, I mean the profits I have taken was that much.

The individual stocks I own at this moment range from up 46% to a loss of 11%. If I were to liquidate everything right now, I'd double the profits I have taken so far this year.
If everything I had sold at their current stops, I walk away with an additional 50% over what I've profited.

Oh, the market goes up and down?

Thanks for telling me that parados, I had no idea.
I should diversify? Wow. I just didn't know.

I'm not interested in options.
This is my retirement account and I'm on track for what my goals are.

I would never put $30K into Lehman, based on the analysts, because I only look at what the analysts say, but do the rest of my homework and make my own decisions.

Why are people so adamant in this belief it can't be done? I can't remember if it was GW or phoenix that basically prophisized I would loose my skivy's at the worst of the downturn. In reality, I made quite a bit.

I take much less risk than the vast majority of investors. However, I know I'll never be able to convince naysayers of that.

I believe if anyone wants to learn about finances, they shouldn't be discouraged with tales of horror that terrible things will happen to you.

If you're smart, careful and are dispassionate about your trades, making them without emotion, you have a good chance of success. More than 1/2 my trades involve maybe 20 stocks that do well at times, do poorly at others.

I buy them just when they stop doing poorly, make sure as quickly as possible I won't lose money, then enjoy the ride, whether it earns me 1%, 5% or 45%.

Of course I loose money on individual trades. duh. For the money lost of multiple trades that sold before breaking even, I make it back on one that earns not too many percentage points. Then, the ones that do really well are my moneymakers.

It's really not rocket science.

I set my initial stops at 97% of what the lowest point the stock was at in the 2 weeks prior to my buying it.
It would have to have shot up 17% to 27% in the 2 weeks prior to my buy to lose 20% to 30% on an individual stock, based on an unexpected drop.

If a stock had gone up 17% to 27% in the past 2 weeks, I wouldn't buy it, since it would probably be at the top of its cycle. I'd wait for it to go back down. Then, I might not be interested anyway.

Right now I'm cash heavy as a few stocks stopped out within the last 2 weeks, and I don't see any immediate buys I feel good enough about. That'll change, it always does.
For what I'm holding, all but 2 at at a profit.

btw, I don't think I'd ever own apple. It's low in the last 12 months was around $325.
That's too expensive. Yes, the value is estimated to be over $1,100 per share, but that's just crazy for a share of stock.

They are up to over $600 now, they should split at least 4:1 to make it affordable to people.
But I don't think it's ever in their plans to split.

Well, your suggestion sounds interesting)
Suppose I'll try this site, I'm just curious about it

Thnx to all of your replies, guys

Of course it can be done. But YOU admit that it can't ALWAYS be done.

I was merely pointing out that anyone EXPECTING to ALWAYS make a profit is deluding themselves. Even Warren Buffet has down years.

The reality is that most small investors do worse on their own than the market as a whole. Realism is hardly a "tale of horror". Congratulations on being lucky so far chai. I hope it continues for you. But the simple math, says at some point you will get hit with some bad choices and do worse than the market. It's not a horror story. It's the reality. One you seem to admit but are upset when others are warned about it.


By the way, you seem to be confusing profits from when you bought the stocks with profits for the year. They are 2 different things.

The OP came in looking for advice on how to "bet" on the market. Can he make money? Yes. Does he have expectations that are unrealistic? Quite probably. Go back and read my original post. I never said he shouldn't do it. I said he needed money that he could afford to lose and then mentioned he could open accounts with as little as $500. With only $500, any attempt to diversify and trade stocks often will kill you in trading costs. If you spread that $500 over just 5 stocks at even $7 per trade it will cost you $35 to buy the stocks. Another $35 to sell them. The quickly eats up that 1%, 5% or even 10% increase in stock price.

Ah, the stop loss plan. Set a stop loss and reduce your losses. One of the problems with that strategy is in the right market it can tie you into losses. When stocks are volatile, you will always hit that stop loss before stocks bounce back up. It can lead to doing substantially worse than the market as a whole because you buy a stock, it dips, you sell and then it bounces back to higher than where you bought it so now you have to spend more money to buy it when it hits your next 2 week target.

Since you are doing your trading in a retirement account, you at least have a tax advantage. When people in a taxed account start playing the stop loss game, they can often find themselves with a large tax bill they wouldn't have had if they were to just buy and hold.


The other issue with stop losses is that the market shuts down at night. Say you own a stock at $100. You have set a stop loss for $97. Greece defaults on it's debt over night. Your stock opens the next day at $80. All the stop losses in place that morning, drive it down to $70 in the first hour. Your stop loss is in line with all the other orders and maybe executes at $75. By noon the stock has recovered and is back up to $92. A stop loss doesn't make you immune to 20% - 30% drops.

I am only trying to explain there is no sure fire way to make money in the market. There are a lot of ways that work well most of the time. But you have to understand there will be times when any strategy used can turn catastrophic.

I suggest you google "best online brokers" and read some of the many stories on them.

They will usually list the same companies and give reviews of them:
Fidelity, Scottrade, Etrade, Schwab, etc.

Then spend some time reading investment sites like fool.com. You can make money in the market. Just don't expect to get rich over night.

Oh jesus parados.

You're right.
I loose money left and right, I have no idea what I'm doing. If I don't make money on every single trade I'm a failure. There's just no getting around it, I'm on the road to the poor house.

Happy now?

Have I ever once said there is no 100% foolproof way to ensure a purchase will make money?
No, I have not.
Have I ever said anything about get rich quick?
No, I have not.
Have I ever said there is no risk?
No I have not.

Have I ever been surprised and unexpectedly lost money overnight by placing a stop and the market goes down after hours?
Yes, I have. So?
Much MUCH more often that does not happen, so overall I'm happy.


What I have been repeatedly saying is that if you have a brain in your head it's not necessary to always rely of having a broker make your financial moves for you, if you can make moves smarter and faster for yourself as an individual.
A broker must make many people happy, and buys in bulk. I only have myself to make happy, and can move on my own behalf.

It's not as scary as you and other "ohhhh....it's a big bad world out there" make it out to be. IF you keep your wits about you.

I'm tired of repeating myself, and I'm tired of listening to people who use discouraging anecdotes to people to keep them in the dark

If a person refuses to act prudently, does not weigh their risks, do their homework and otherwise act intelligently and not emotionally over buys, they will likely lose money. I can't help that.



My suggestion to the op was in my original post, and I hope she looks into that or other educational opportunities that help her target buys using specific online tools that can help her determine in one place what the stock is actually worth, compare them to other companies in the same industry. Look at the trend analysis on one page for the past 10-15 years, look at insider trading, stochastics and MACDH, along with the moving average, etc.
to dertermine if it's a good time to buy.
I listed the name of the company that opened these doors more me, and it was one of the most exciting and positive moves in my life.

That's all I have to say about that.

I think you need psychiatric help. I would suggest you don't attempt to treat your mental health on your own. It's much more difficult than making your own trades.

Thanks for giving the link and information as it is really useful to those who are in stock exchange and who want to invest in the stock exchange and its true that for trading you should be above 18 years old .

For that you have to do research on same and take a look on market condition before join into this

If you really want to do this then you have to take some risk for that because its not possible to stay safe in the market.