read some finance blogs, i like seekingalpha.com talk to an hourly fee based financial planner...avoid brokers that rely on commissions from their products since they tend to just push their bank products that charge high percentage of commission fees so that even when you lose money you have to pay them
market is a little down because of the fed saying they will stop pumping money because they feel the economy is on verge of recovering
so its a good time to get into some stocks but if you want to be safe and limit your risk just put money into either whole world or U.S. market etf that covers the whole market...normally the market usually does 9% a year so if you just put your extra cash in every year and don't touch it by say 20 years it would be a nice little fund due to compounding...even hedge fund managers who get paid big bucks dont' always beat the market
if you feel the market won't really go higher and is due to a correction put some money in a volatility index to hedge your risk so if the market falls you don't completely lose your ass...
with investing avoid emotional moves like selling after you lost money and then it comes back and recovers before you can buy it back
some good picks in my opinion for the long run...i say tesla gets to 150 in the next year or two its at about 100 now...bofi and exone are riskier but the payoff possibilities are nice for the long term, at some people think google will hit 1000 but its at 800 something now so thats a 20% increase but it won't happen tomorrow
if your really risky look at penny stocks you can become rich overnight if you risk enough money but also lose all of it in an instant...don't fukk with any stock less than 5 dollars unless you really can afford to lose whatever you put into it...its about the same thing as gambling
at least established companies their decline can be seen with more time to make a decision for the most part outside of shyt like ENRON but thats why sarbanes oxley exists
but take care of your debts and have good funds like an IRA Roth IRA your company's 401k and low debts and about a 10-20% savings of your salary each year and anything extra if you want to have fun with speculative stocks have at it because you won't starve if you lose that money
