<p>Hello guys, I am sophomore accounting major attending a state university school. I was always intrigued watching people involved in the stock market in television. What I want to do now if not late, to start my own personal stock investments. Without any knowledge, the best place to start I'm assuming is opening up an online stocks account. I done some research and by far I have found Scottrade to be popular amongst stock investors. </p>
<p>**Can anyone with a very good experience and apprehension with online stock investments heed me some advice on this? </p>
<p>**If not Scottrade, what other online webs are preferrable?</p>
<p>**Should I even try online stocking? Will there be more of a loss for me? Is it worth it?</p>
<p>Thanks guys.</p>
<p>I used to have an account with them when I had plenty of money I didn’t have anything better to do with. Fortunately I needed to convert my stock portfolio into a car before the market really crashed so I came out just fine. Scottrade’s system was really nice and the people at their offices I went to were very nice. I would say go for it if the following applies:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>You have money you can afford to lose.</p></li>
<li><p>You think it will be fun.</p></li>
<li><p>If you lose some money you’ll be fine chalking it up as a learning experience. If you can go to Las Vegas, lose some money and still have a good time, then this shouldn’t be much different. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>It’s not going to give you any kind of insight into accounting and don’t think you are going to get a job because you beat the market. Everyone will just laugh at you if you try to bring it up in an interview or cover letter…</p>
<p>Don’t do anything other than online investing. You probably don’t have enough money to warrant having some professional handle it, and if your objective is to be very safe you can always do that by buying mutual funds or index funds.</p>
<p>Uhh, try investopedia and gain some “experience.” You dont want to use your own money, with selling on short and etc. Go look at investopedia and practice.</p>
<p>I think you need to use your real money to get the experience of losing it, taking risk, feeling like there’s something on the line. It teaches you about yourself. If losing $1000 fills you with remorse, second guessing, etc…then you will have learned a lesson about yourself that you can’t find on Investopedia.</p>
<p>He has done little interest, according to his post. To go directly into investing is throwing money at a wall and hoping his returns are good. I mean he probably does not know P/E ratios and why the stocks behave the way they do. I say get some more research, and then proceed to learn as much as you can. Then you can do this experience. Unless you wont miss it, go on right ahead and hope the money goes up.</p>