You may buy one stock at a time (I assume you mean one company’s shares versus 1 share of stock which can be done, but is not economical since you will get charged a commission). Depending on how often you plan to invest, it may not be wise to buy just one company’s shares at a time. The key to successful investment over time is diversification, which means spreading your investments among multiples companies preferably in different industries. Unless you plan on ramping up your portfolio quickly (say buying 8 different companies’ shares in the next 12 – 18 months), you might be better off with a mutual fund. A mutual fund takes your money and other peoples’ money,pools it together and buys a diversified portfolio of stock, which is what you want. Although they charge fees, you get professional managers looking out for you. If you go that route (mutual fund), look for what is called a “no-load” fund – these funds have much lower fees (and usually nothing up front) than do “load” funds.

You can add to you investment at any time (just by sending the managing company more money), you can track your fund values in the newspaper or online (each fund has a daily NAV or Value – multiply the NAV by the number of fund shares you own and that is what your investment is worth), and different funds invest in different areas (some invest heavily in tech stocks, others in income stocks, some in bonds, some in small cap [small companies], etc.).

Diversify. Don’t put all your money into one stock. If it were to go bankrupt (such as Enron did), you’d lose everything.

And don’t think the key to making money is by picking a stock that will triple in value overnight. The key is to buy in solid companies, and waiting over the course of time.

I recommend investing in mutual funds or in ETF’s (which are mutual funds you buy just like a stock). They are a basket of companies (such as 100 companies) that are put together in one fund, and you buy shares of that fund. All in all they’re pretty safe.

Some ticker symbols of ETF’s that are pretty well diversified are VO, VTI, NYC, and SPY.

And if you want to invest in overseas markets, consider EFA, DIM, and VWO.

Now is a decent time to buy. Things aren’t looking too good, but stocks are very low. As the old saying goes, “buy low, sell high.”

Set up an account at sharebuilder.com. It only costs you $10 to buy, $10 to sell. Plus, there are no monthly charges.

Below are links to sharebuilder and vanguard (which has a lot of ETF’s to choose from).

Good luck.

Whoa there!!
Okay! First things first, do NOT focus on a brokerage for their stock picks. Nasty idea!
The competition within the online brokerage market is pretty stiff, so they all will essentially offer the same services. If you are concerned about price, then look them up. A LOT of the prices you see advertised have strings attached. For example, you need to make at least 120 trades a year. That is trades, which means there is a buy and a sell in their, which means a total of 240 transactions…multiply that by $10, and you can see how expensive that can be. Or you may have to maintain an account balance of a certain amount…usually $100K. I have also seen the fine print advise that these rates that are being offered are introductory only. So it pays to read!
Moreover, your best bet is to educate yourself.
I first started out watching MadMoney and reading Cramer’s books. I no longer see that as a sole resource, but for a pundit, he certainly is passionate about breaking down the jargon in a way that anyone can understand. The jargon was specifically created to keep people out of the business, so you can see the value in his work already. I would then expand your horizons to include reading some books on your own as well. People only do well in the market when they learn to fish, rather than have fish handed to them.
I think it is awesome you are breaking out into the unknown like this. I wish you the best of luck and I would first recommend learning the ropes in a sector you are already interested in. This makes the knowledge retention all the more easier.
Good luck!
I hope this helped some!

Diversify. Don’t put all your money into one stock. If it were to go bankrupt (such as Enron did), you’d lose everything.

And don’t think the key to making money is by picking a stock that will triple in value overnight. The key is to buy in solid companies, and waiting over the course of time.

I recommend investing in mutual funds or in ETF’s (which are mutual funds you buy just like a stock). They are a basket of companies (such as 100 companies) that are put together in one fund, and you buy shares of that fund. All in all they’re pretty safe.

Some ticker symbols of ETF’s that are pretty well diversified are VO, VTI, NYC, and SPY.

And if you want to invest in overseas markets, consider EFA, DIM, and VWO.

Now is a decent time to buy. Things aren’t looking too good, but stocks are very low. As the old saying goes, “buy low, sell high.”

Set up an account at sharebuilder.com. It only costs you $10 to buy, $10 to sell. Plus, there are no monthly charges.

Below are links to sharebuilder and vanguard (which has a lot of ETF’s to choose from).

Good luck.

Whoa there!!
Okay! First things first, do NOT focus on a brokerage for their stock picks. Nasty idea!
The competition within the online brokerage market is pretty stiff, so they all will essentially offer the same services. If you are concerned about price, then look them up. A LOT of the prices you see advertised have strings attached. For example, you need to make at least 120 trades a year. That is trades, which means there is a buy and a sell in their, which means a total of 240 transactions…multiply that by $10, and you can see how expensive that can be. Or you may have to maintain an account balance of a certain amount…usually $100K. I have also seen the fine print advise that these rates that are being offered are introductory only. So it pays to read!
Moreover, your best bet is to educate yourself.
I first started out watching MadMoney and reading Cramer’s books. I no longer see that as a sole resource, but for a pundit, he certainly is passionate about breaking down the jargon in a way that anyone can understand. The jargon was specifically created to keep people out of the business, so you can see the value in his work already. I would then expand your horizons to include reading some books on your own as well. People only do well in the market when they learn to fish, rather than have fish handed to them.
I think it is awesome you are breaking out into the unknown like this. I wish you the best of luck and I would first recommend learning the ropes in a sector you are already interested in. This makes the knowledge retention all the more easier.
Good luck!
I hope this helped some!

You are quite young so I presume you don’t know too much about the financial markets yet. I think it is important for you to learn more about how the financial markets work for yourself rather than simply put your trust in the advice of financial trading companies. You can then start investing on a small scale once you decide on the type of markets and investment products you would like to invest in and how much risk you are willing to take

If you are ultimately interested in making a profit from price fluctuations either in the short or long term, have a look at a site called gnutrade.com (www.gnutrade.com)

The site has a fun game-like trading platform which is great for beginners and lets you trade on markets with small amounts, by trading on price movements. This means you don’t have to get involved with the hassle and extra costs of buying the underlying markets. It also offers a variety of deposit methods.

You can try the platform for free without signing up so you might as well take a look and see if it suits you