A Good Way to Learn How to Invest in the Stock Market
A good way to learn how to invest in the stock market is to play stock market games such as the one currently at CNBC.com. They give you “play” money and let you invest it any way you want, even currency trading!
Play around with a stock screener such as the ones found on Yahoo’s, Google’s, and MSN’s finance websites (great sources of finance news, as well). Personally, I use the stock screener at Smartmoney.com, but it’s a paid service at $58/year. There’s another stock screener at CNBC.com as well.
Screeners can be a bit confusing at first if you have no clue what you’re looking for, but most screeners will have “preset” screens that will enable you to figure out what are the numbers that matter. I found the one at Yahoo to be the most user-friendly for a beginner. The one at Smartmoney.com is really good, too, but again, you have to pay for that one and I would never tell a finance noob to plunk down cold, hard cash for a tool they might not like or ever learn to use.
But here’s how you learn: join a game, screen for some stocks you think might be winners and invest your play money. Sit back and watch your portfolio grow (or shrink). Watch for how things like current events in the news impact the market and try to become aware of the different “cycles” involved.
There are some good books and TV shows that can help you learn how to become a better stock market investor. Try reading How To Make Money In Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times or Bad or Jim Cramer’s Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World. Cramer’s book gives you a good overview of sound stock market investment strategy while O’Neill’s spells out the details of his CANSLIM method. Both are great reads.
You should also tune in to CNBC and FoxBusiness (if available in your area. Cox didn’t carry it, so I had to switch to DirecTV to get it!). There’s a terriffic two-hour block of finance shows on regular Fox News starting at 10 am (EST) every Saturday morning. So start watching!
Related posts:
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Nice writing. You are on my RSS reader now so I can read more from you down the road.
Allen Taylor