"General Trading" Article 7: Stock Investing for Beginners - Picking Your First Stocks

As a beginner to stock investing, you may be wondering how to go about picking your first several stocks. Since you are just starting out, you don’t have the confidence in your ability to identify good stocks to target. That is just a normal part of the learning process. As the old Chinese proverb goes, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, or something like that.

You can get some help early on in your stock investing journey. There are dozens of resources available on the Internet, or tons of information in today’s issue of the Investor’s Business Daily, that will give you guidance on which stocks to pay attention to. Some resources go so far as to offer you stock pick recommendations. Others just point out stocks that are showing some pattern in their charts or interesting activity.

Here are some general categories of stock investing picks that beginners can use:

1. Stock Investing Forums – Since stock investing is so common and so popular, you can bet there are plenty of forum sites available online. Visiting these will give you specific stocks to look into and why, as well as insights from more experienced investors.

To find these sites online, go to your favorite search engine and search for “stock investing forums”.

2. Websites that Specialize in Monitoring Stocks - You can also find many sites that are dedicated to analyzing stock information on a daily basis. They highlight stocks that are interesting. What can be really valuable here for the stock investing beginner is that these sites will give you the reason why the stock is notable. You can study the points and go verify those points for yourself. This is s fast way to move you up the learning curve as you are following the analysis of a more experienced investor. As an example, DrPennyStock.com is a site that focuses on penny stocks and explains in a good amount of detail the technical indicators that are going on with that stock.

To locate these sites online, go to your favorite search engine and search for “hot stock picks” or “stock recommendations”.

3. Investor’s Business Daily - If you are a beginner to stock investing, you may never have heard of IBD. It is a daily newspaper, also available online, that is dedicated to stock investing and stock traders. It speaks the language of the short to medium term investor. You simply cannot beat it for delivering a steady supply of stock picking information on a daily basis. Pick up one issue from your local book store and you will likely find a week’s worth of interesting stocks to follow up on.

Whatever source you use, try to understand the patterns that are described for a particular stock or the reasoning behind the stock pick. Doing this will accelerate the learning process for stock investing beginners. Pretty soon, you will be able to do most of your stock picking on your own.

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