Front Office Football Central - View Single Post - Thinking of getting into the stock market

QuikSand · 01-01-2008, 06:28 AM

There is a ton of information available out there on what sort of "fundamentals" to look for in an individual stock, if it's something that interests you. The transition you seem to have in mind -- transferring the sort of attention that you pay to things like fantasy sports into playing the market doesn't sound unreasonable to me.

If you are interested in playing the market short term (which it sounds like) the first rule for you is that you should do so with money that you can afford to lose. I don't know what you mean by "not much" but I agree that there's rather little value in simulations, as most people find that until it's real money, they simply aren't willing to dedicate real attention to things.

I personally don't see much harm in some trading as a side activity (not necessarily "thinking long term") as long as it's with resources that you could do without.

And I generally am inclined to disagree with almost any single bit of advice that wraps up in something that just seems to simple to follow as "do this, not that." If rules for successful investing were as simple as that, it wouldn't be a challenge. But it is.

I do agree with one comment above that a very user-friendly site to start out with is fool.com -- a lot of their content is user-driven (pros and cons there) but it does a good job of being pretty digestible if you're new to the game.

01-01-2008, 06:28 AM	#10
QuikSand lolzcat Join Date: Oct 2000 Location: Annapolis, Md	There is a ton of information available out there on what sort of "fundamentals" to look for in an individual stock, if it's something that interests you. The transition you seem to have in mind -- transferring the sort of attention that you pay to things like fantasy sports into playing the market doesn't sound unreasonable to me. If you are interested in playing the market short term (which it sounds like) the first rule for you is that you should do so with money that you can afford to lose. I don't know what you mean by "not much" but I agree that there's rather little value in simulations, as most people find that until it's real money, they simply aren't willing to dedicate real attention to things. I personally don't see much harm in some trading as a side activity (not necessarily "thinking long term") as long as it's with resources that you could do without. And I generally am inclined to disagree with almost any single bit of advice that wraps up in something that just seems to simple to follow as "do this, not that." If rules for successful investing were as simple as that, it wouldn't be a challenge. But it is. I do agree with one comment above that a very user-friendly site to start out with is fool.com -- a lot of their content is user-driven (pros and cons there) but it does a good job of being pretty digestible if you're new to the game.