Stock Investing Guide - How To Start Investing In Stocks

The stock market is a tricky game to learn so you need to make sure you understand how the markets actually work. Otherwise, you will probably become very frustrated and disappointed with your results.

4 Steps For New Investors

Step 1: Emergency Fund

Before you ever begin investing in risky investments such as stocks you need to have an emergency fund in place. However, most people make the mistake of leaving their savings in a traditional brick-and-mortar savings account. The problem with that is traditional savings accounts at your local hometown banks generally pay no more than 1% APY. This is why you should keep your emergency fund in a high-yield online savings account. High-yield online savings accounts generally pay much higher interest rates than traditional brick-and-mortar banks, and they link directly to your current checking account. They are also FDIC insured just like your current brick-and-mortar account. One well-known and reputable online bank is ING Direct. Take a free tour of ING Direct

Step 2: Learn The Basics

Many people jump into the stock market without really understanding how the markets actually work and the risks that are involved. It is an absolute must to learn the basics before you just start throwing money into the markets. Our free beginners guide should help you learn the basics. Learn the basics of Stock Investing

Step 3: Picking The Right Broker

Once you have the basics down it is time to pick the right online stock broker. In my opinion, all the mainstream brokers are perfectly fine to use as a basic trading platform. However, you will find that many of them charge a lot of money in commissions just to make simple stock trades. I honestly believe you should NOT be paying more than $7.00 a trade. If you are then you are simply paying for the brokers advertising hype. TradeKing has established a very good reputation in the world of online brokers. They have consistently offered their customers very reasonable $4.95 trades. For overall value you simply can not beat TradeKing in regards to service, quality, and price. In this day and age of technology there is no reason you should be paying high commission costs to make simple stocks trades. TradeKing has also been ranked very highly by many popular investing resources: SmartMoney ranked TradeKing as the #1 Discount Broker. Barron's has given TradeKing 4 stars. One thing that I have found when researching TradeKing is they have a very loyal following of satisfied customers. TradeKing does not play games or rely on gimmicks to attract customers. They simply rely on fair pricing and quality customer service to retain and attract new customers.

Step 4: Picking The Right Stocks

Without a doubt picking quality stocks consistently is the hardest part of investing in the stock market. There are literally thousands of stocks to choose from. Therefore, trying to find quality stocks on your own is very difficult for the average investor sitting at home. By the time you find a quality stock the professionals on Wall Street have probably already beat you to it. One way to level the playing field is by using a quality technical analysis software program. These programs will scan through the thousands of available stocks to potentially find winning stocks. The programs will look for technical indicators that many of the professionals on Wall Street use as well. The best technical analysis software program I have found is called MarketClub. It was created by a former professional trader named Adam Hewison. Take a free tour of MarketClub