I'm Pretty New To Investing - Any Advice?

[Amirynalar]

I'm not a pro at buying and selling stocks and to be honest, I don't have a lot of funds to invest either. I set up an account with TD Ameritrade, mainly because there is no minimum balance or investment requirements and began toying around with their ThinkorSwim platform in paper mode (simulation)...

In any event, I just bought 6 shares of SIRI (Sirius XM Holdings Inc) stock this morning and at close today, I made $0.06. I know that isn't much, but that I actually made money my first day makes me ecstatic. I picked SIRI because it is selling for under $5 per share, has stability as a company, and invests a ton on marketing (there isn't a week that goes by without me getting at least one piece of mail from Sirius radio), not to mention they have contracts with most auto dealerships around the country.

[Andrvovice]

I selected dividend reinvestment on my account and am going to be investing about $25 every week. I'd like to ideally buy around 100 shares of stock per company and have stock in a few hundred companies. I'm thinking of focusing pretty heavily on natural resources...

I was wondering, do any of you veterans have any tips on investing profitably? Any markets to avoid; considerations to keep in mind and so on... Any advice would be great.

[Anthonmr]

Luck certainly plays a role, but so does keeping abreast of market news, trends and strategy. Warren Buffet has made billions in the stock market and I guarantee luck is only partially responsible.

[anohoyuluj]

$0.06 is more than you had yesterday! Congrats and way to get excited.

If you're one for reading up on things, Technical Analysis of Stock Trends by Robert D. Edwards and John Magee is pretty great. Its on its 11th (I think) edition, and you can normally find a copy in your library, or pick one up at Amazon.com - http://amzn.to/1VvW3i8

The book goes a long way to show you the basic patterns to look for when trading. Its good to know, else you could fall into some pretty obvious pits, which is no fun!

[aoyoubuquusu]

Depending on who you're trading with, they may charge more for OTC markets, or penny stocks, so careful on that front! I used to use capital one share builder, but they charged / share for penny stocks (any thing under $1.00), so that got frustrating and expensive fast! Recently I moved over to Robinhood.com as they offer free trading but only on larger markets (No OTC), and they don't do ROTH accounts. Which is a little frustrating, but if you're just getting into it, its a great way to avoid some fees!