<p>Hey, I am just looking to invest and wondering if any of you have already invested and what places online I can go to invest?</p>
<p>well you have tdwaterhouse, which my parents use. </p>
<p>then theres etrade, ameritrade which i have more experience with</p>
<p>which one do you use or one thats good to get started with?</p>
<p>red06, what's your percentage earn rate? i'm thinking about etrade right now</p>
<p>i was thinking about beginning with only about 2k, kind of playing around with it and moving from there. (going to take the short and dangerous route, day-trades)</p>
<p>Mark Cuban: "owning a stock that doesn't pay dividends is not much different from owning a baseball card. The current stock market is broken."</p>
<p>I HIGHLY doubt that you ahve the time or training necesssary to be sucessful in day trading, and would highly recommend against investing heavily in it. I don't think trading is something you can dabble in, either it's a full time job or don't do it at all.</p>
<p>Not to say you can't OWN stocks, but don't TRADE them on an hourly basis, you will probably lose.</p>
<p>Tufts> You cannot pattern day trade with below 25K in capital.</p>
<p>I have to agree. It takes thousands of hours and easily years to obtain an edge in the markets.</p>
<p>I have no clue how much I've earned. from what ive learned, its best to buy solid stocks like microsoft or google, and leave them alone for a long time. thats actually what my parents and i have done. i actually dont own any stocks myself, i just help my 'rents keep tabs on theirs and research a bit. if you trade hourly or even daily, you'll end up losing big bucks, like my brother (lost several grand).</p>
<p>Buy and hold huh. If you held MSFT for the last 5 years you would have made 0 dollars (slightly negative actually). As for GOOG lets wait for the euphoria to die out. Google isn't taking over the world I am sorry to say.</p>
<p>What people need is an edge. You are going up against other market participants. You have to be better than the others to make money. It is widely quoted 90% of traders fail. You need something to set yourself apart from the majority and get into the minority making all the cash.</p>
<p>In my opinion if you dont have an edge in trading (investing included) you are better of putting your money is a diversified group of index funds and hope to beat the market averages.</p>
<p>gatordan, this is a more/less thing to learn about stocks. The 2k will be out of my pocket and if I lose it all, then by all means, perhaps I've learned a lesson.</p>
<p>It's actually comparable to 95% traders that fail. </p>
<p>mahras2, MSFT split within the last 5 years didn't they? edit. 18-Feb-03 [2:1] was the last time they split. Effectively, the price is the same now as it was about 5 years ago.</p>
<p>Those that invested heavily in Google early on would have made a killing by now. </p>
<p>Quick question, mahras2, can you explain what you by patten day-trade below 25k? Do you mean this as it's hard to make a profit with outout 25k in? Or do you mean companies such as Etrade, etc. do not allow you to begin to invest without 25k stored?</p>
<p>I am guesing you are looking at Yahoo Finance. Yahoo adjusts prices based on splits so the charts are normalized. So yes MSFT is still at 0% return for 5 yrs. </p>
<p>No as in legally you need to have 25K at least to pattern day trade (otherwise you need to enter a trade and then close it after 2 trading days have at least past...maybe its 3). Also with 2K you have minimal chances of making money to even cover commissions as your small gains (that is even if you make money).</p>
<p>mahras, I did not know that. Thanks for clearing that up and that info. </p>
<p>That burst quite a big bubble in plans.</p>