How to Get into the Stock Market

Are you interested in getting involved in the stock market? Do you feel like you have no idea where to start? If so, you are like plenty of other people before they embark on this exciting and potentially lucrative pastime. Whether you are looking for a place to passively park your money and wait for it to grow or you have shining dreams of day trader glory, you can get started with just a little bit of money and expertise.

Choose your approach

If you have a retirement account, you might already be an investor in the stock market. And you may want to continue being this type of investor, one who is largely hands-off. Many people will tell you this is the best approach, and it's true that over the long run, an array of investments in the stock market will almost certainly increase in value even if there are fluctuations over a shorter period of time.

You can use digital tools for personal finance to monitor your growth over time.

However, you may also want to take a more hands-on approach. The first things you'll need to decide is if you want to manage your portfolio yourself or if you want someone else to do it for you. Neither of these is inherently better than the other. What's important is that you choose the approach that you know will work for you. Of course, you could also change over time. You might start out with more professional help and start doing more of the work yourself as you learn more.

Choose your account

It used to be that when you wanted to start investing, you went to a full-service broker who would work with you in developing a long-term financial plan and help you create the kind of portfolio that would be right for you based on a number of different factors. These types of professionals are still around, and you can still engage their services although they will cost more than online brokers. Online brokers mean that anyone with an internet connection can start investing today, even if you only have a little money. You'll need to decide whether you want to do it yourself or have a robo-advisor do it for you. The former will require you to research and learn as much as possible about investing. The latter will gather information about your goals and make choices for you.

Paper trading and DSPPs

Before you move forward, there are a few other options you might be interested in learning about. First, you may want to look into paper trading. This is essentially an opportunity to practice being in the market without actually spending any money. You can learn a lot by spending some time paper...

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