Author: Caterina Christakos
Title: Understanding the Stock Market

Article: You'll be able to at least enter into conversations with what you'll learn here in Stock Market 101. Purchasing stock is a risky situation. The possibility of great losses exists. However, there is also a good possibility of amassing a fortune when using good judgment in your investments. Concentrate on Stock Market 101 advice. You don't need to be rich to invest in the stock market. Everyone had to start somewhere, even Warren Buffett. Now, admittedly, he is a different story all together, but he had a starting point, too. He made his first stock purchase at the age of eleven. But, he had to learn the "ropes", too. His net worth at the present is in excess of 50 billion dollars. Mr. Buffett is very conservative in his lifestyle and in his investment strategies. Read about his strategies for insight. Sometimes an Employee Benefit Many people learn first about stock through their employer. Some employers offer a 401K plan that matches the employee's stock purchase investments. They don't know much about the stock market, but they realize that if they put, for example, $100 a month into the company stock, it will be matched by $100 from the company. If they hold onto that 401K, it could grow into quite a large amount of profit over the years. What is a stock? Stock is considered a partial ownership in a company. How large your ownership is depends upon the amount of capital you have to invest in the company. Most often, stock becomes available on the open market when a company needs money, either for expansion or for some sort of improvement to the business. This public sale of stock is made public on the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, or the NASDAQ. The price of a share of a particular company's stock can be found by watching CNBC financial news, or MSNBC online by typing in the stock symbol for the particular company. An example of a familiar stock symbol is MCD for McDonald's. Being new to investing, you probably won't know the stock symbol for the company in which you are interested. Ask a stock broker or check online with CNBC. Do your homework before buying Stock Market 101 recommends that you don't just take for granted that the business or company recommended to you will thrive. Look at their past history, and their future growth plans. Do they intend to merge with another company sometime in the future? This could be good or bad, depending on the past history of the company to be merged. Look at various time frames for the company or companies, maybe a 10 year period. What earnings per share have been realized, and what dividends paid out over the period. Compare what you find about the company's history to what is shown on the NASDAQ, the S&P 500 or the Dow. Caterina Christakos is a private investor and published author. To get more information go to: http://financialinvestmentsdirectory.com

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