The stock market is not a toy
But I’m going to treat it like one :)
I’ve been thinking of getting my feet wet in the stockmarket, so I signed up for a Sharebuilder account. I did it through Costco so that I could get the $55 referral bonus after my first trade. (If you’d like a referral bonus but aren’t a Costco member, I can send you one as well. Just email me.) The signup process was quick and simple. I’ll probably check out Zecco as well.
So far I haven’t done anything more than send a tiny bit of money to my account and add about 30 potential stocks to a watch list for myself. I want to learn more about things before I actually buy any individual stocks.
The idea I have is to treat the stock market like a toy: to play with it and have fun. I’m going to allot a certain amount to it each month (or maybe every couple of months, I haven’t decided yet) and just have fun picking stocks with pretty charts. The money will be an amount that I won’t mind losing entirely, if it comes to that. Of course I won’t mind at all if “pretty charts” turns out to equal “gains”. Here’s hoping :)
Play away! In my experience, no other game will have a more profound impact on your net worth bottom line. It’s a blast too.
How much does it cost to join?
Keep us posted on how things go – should be interesting. Are you going to focus on anything in particular?
Thanks for the encouragement, fn.
Tread, there’s no cost to join Sharebuilder. I just sent $5 to the account to open it. But you don’t get the bonus until after you actually make a trade, and the cost of doing that varies depending on which plan you’ve signed up for.
Dividend Guy, I’m not sure yet. I was thinking renewable energy, maybe. Otherwise probably just random companies that I either know of or come across.