To a total novice, it might seem that everyone else who trades stocks is smarter than they are. Most likely though, most of the knowledge you need will come over time with experience. You can learn a lot from books, magazines, television shows and other places but there is no substitute for the hands on experience you will gain with time.

Investing your money in something like Treasury bills or bank certificates of deposits is very easy compared to buying and selling stocks. With stocks, you are not guaranteed any sort of profit like you are in interest bearing vehicles and you may even lose money. That is why you should always avoid investing money you know you will need in stocks.

If you have money that you are saving for a specific purpose, you should probably not have it in the stock market. Only money you can stand to lose should be invested in stocks. However, this doesn’t mean you need to constantly worry about your stocks and if you are prone to worrying, stocks may be the wrong choice for you.

Many financial advisers will tell you that you should always have your money invested in a variety of investments. This includes the stock market where it is a good idea to have your money in a handful of stocks and those stocks should be in different industries. That way, you are protected if one of your stocks goes down sharply. Anyone who insists on having all their money in just one stock should go out and read one of the Stock Market For Dummies books.

Additionally, most professionals will tell you that you should invest in stocks with a long term time horizon in mind rather than have a hit and run strategy. The stock market has gone up consistently over the last 70 years and most anyone who buys and keeps stocks has done well.

There are many different brokers online, but I would suggest taking a good look first at some of the larger, more well-known ones. They are often this way for a reason, and have years under their belt of building a good reputation for themselves. Also, be on the lookout for deals. Often times brokers will offer you a certain amount of free trades when you start out, some will give you cash when you open an account with a certain amount of money, and others simply have cheaper rates per trade than the rest of the bunch.

Make sure you look into things such as extra fees. Some brokers will charge inactivity fees if you don’t place a trade within a certain amount of time. Get an idea first of how often you intend to be buying stocks, and then make this decision based on that. A couple of the more well-known brokers are:

Ameritrade

Scott Trade

E-trade

Of course that list is far, far from all-inclusive, but should give you a good starting point if buying stocks is something that you think you will be taking seriously.

Make Sure You Know What You Are Doing

My last bit of advice would be that. Before you go and invest your life savings into opening an account, thinking that buying stocks is what will take you to retirement ten times earlier than you originally planned, make sure you learn the ropes. Make sure you know everything about your broker, what they allow and don’t allow, and also make sure you are constantly learning about the stock market. It is constantly changing, and things that worked ten years ago might not work today. There are countless books available to you to teach you both the basics and finer, more advanced points of stock trading. Take advantage!