Never bought before. Any tips? What you look for?

Go with mutual funds. My foray into stocks went like this in value:

$12,000 invested, ending value $0, as the two companies went belly up.

Jim

I like the walnut with lots of swirls. Are you looking for a ready made stock or are you gonna whittle it out yourself?

Robinhood - you can go as small or as big as you want. Super easy. Put money into account with an ACH transaction.

Mutual funds bundle stocks to ease the downs and also the ups. We don't own a lot of stocks, maybe 30 or so and most we have held for over 20 years. We tried to invest in 3-5 stocks per sector and are in about 4 sectors. We are up considerably over those years but I would guess 1/3rd of the stocks were minimal gain stock or we lost monies. By letting the dividends go back into more stocks over time the value goes up quite a bit. The nice thing about stocks is you can create when you want to capture gains or losses which you don't have control over in management mutual funds unless you decide to sell.

Bryce

Good points, Bryce.

But I don't have the time or the inclination to do the research necessary to feel comfortable putting up money again in stocks directly.

I'll buy a basket of stocks picked by people who are supposed to know better than me, via mutual funds. And take the tax hit, which in my case won't be different, since most of my investments are in retirement funds.

Jim

I use Stifel Nicholas, more specifically a division called Washington Crossing Associates. It’s somewhat like a mutual fund, but more individually managed. The fund usually holds about 20-25 stocks, mostly large caps. The also have some cash held back, for buying opportunities like those that occurred in the spring of 2020.

Are you asking for"tips" on what to buy or looking for information on the mechanics of actually making a trade ?

Most online brokers will allow you to set up an account where you can "paper trade" until you are comfortable with the platform.

You should look for a broker with zero commissions and no annual account fees.

Learn the difference among the different types of orders...........market, limit, GTC, stops, stop limits, conditional etc It is all available online. Basic stuff

I bought a lot of Oil Stock when it tanked last year. Tripled my money in 4 months.
Just collecting dividends now.

I can't tell you much -- I took a chance on a oil company they said was going to go bankrupt.
I found out later that when I bought mine some wealthy person bought 8 hundred Million dollars worth of it.
The price has been going up and the company is making money.

I like cows and pigs. If they become worthless I can always eat them, until they change some laws anyway. I ate some K-Mart stock once and didn't care for it, lol.

Robinhood is a good way to go but do your homework before you buy.

Dave

Don't buy anything just because a coworker or friend says it is a good thing. You will most likely end up with less money than you started with.

TD Ameritrade has a lot of free educational stuff on their website.

My first experience was the situation I listed above. Cost me a good chunk of change

Don't invest anything you can't afford to loose

There are a lot of guys who you can basically pay a small fee to subscribe to, and get stock tips from. We did this with a swing trader and did very well, up until the last month or so. When everything turned to garbage, I lost faith in everything and mostly just holding right now. If you want to become a member of Rokslide (hunting forum), there's a good thread on there that I follow with a bunch of guys smarter than me that have done very well in the market.

The people who put their money into index funds and never touch it overwhelmingly do better than the people who trade individual stocks. You'll hear stories about the guy who turned $350 into $150,000 in 6 weeks. It happens but it's so rare that people tell the story when it does.

Here's what I did:

• Open an online account with a brokerage. It's just a bank account. I used TD Ameritrade. Other big ones are Charles Schwab, Fidelity, and probably a bunch of others. They all work the same way.
• Transfer money from your regular bank account into the brokerage account. You can set that up when you're logged into the brokerage account.
• Choose an index fund to invest into. There are "screener" tools when you log in that let you choose a bunch of criteria and screen different index funds (or any mutual fund or stock) for that criteria. I look for (1) no transaction fee, (2) no load (which means no fees paid), (3) I look for funds that are in the top 20% of returns over the last 5 years.
• Buy that index fund.
• Don't ever touch it again.

Some years are good, some are bad. Don't be tempted to get out when things are going bad or you'll miss the recovery when things get better. Buy low, sell high. If you jump out when things are low, you're buying high selling low. That's how you lose money.

If you're 10 years or more from retirement, ride the waves. When things get bad, there's plenty of time for things to recover. As you get closer to retirement, you don't have as much time to wait for the market to recover. A loss will start to matter. As you near retirement, you'll start moving into safer investments - but those don't have returns that are as high so if you choose safe when you're young, you'll miss out on a lot of investment income.

In an index fund, your average return will be around 10% - 12%. You should be doubling your money (on average) every 6 or 7 years.

I'm not suggesting that you invest in what I invest in because I might be wrong but here's where most of my money is:
TRSPX - S&P500 index fund
NASDX -NASDAQ 100 index fund
TRBCX - blue chip fund (not really an index fund, but close)
BMGAX - not an index fund but it has the biggest, most successful US companies in the fund and has had annual returns between 14% and 40% over the last 5 years. I'd never get close to that if I was trading stocks.

In fact, I do keep a little play money on the side that I trade in stocks. My index funds always outperform the stocks I trade myself.

My first investment was during the swine flu. People stopped buying pork. Pork prices plummeted. I knew this was stupid and it would rebound - since pork has nothing to do with swine flu. I thought it would be smart to invest in pork. I talked to a friend who has a masters degree in agri-business. He said the problem with investing in pork was that commodities have s a due date. Since I didn't know when the price would come back up I might lose money. He suggested investing in a company that processes pork instead.

I bought stock in the largest US pork producer. I think it was Smith Field foods, but I'm not sure that's right anymore. The price came back up. I tripled my money in a year. I was a genius....until they went bankrupt. After the bankruptcy was over, I got pennies.

That is when I learned that investing in individual stocks is risky.

+1 on maintenanceguy's posts.

Best advice I got was to put my first $10k into an index fund tracking S&P. Put on simmer and forget about it.

You need to divide up your investment- what portion of it goes into index or mutual funds? (don't trade this, this is the money I'm planning on having for retirement or whatever). What portion am I willing to risk, in order to try to maximize growth? (this is what gets traded on individual stocks).

Discipline is the key. Dollar cost average your funds- contribute to them on a regular basis as you can. The stocks you are trading? You need to watch them like a hawk. Do your homework, get in at the right time, get out at the right time. You make your money on the buy, not the sell. Buy it right and you're golden.

Everyone is looking for the next grand slam. Forget about it. Base hits win ball games.

Don't get in when market is high . UNLESS it's a new stock . It's going to crash and all it takes is one bomb or a fart to burn in Iran for it to drop.

LOL! Glad I'm not the only one whose mind works like this.

Mike

Sometimes my mind wanders in different directions.