could some wise soul lend me advice on investing at a young age!?

First- unfortunately, there are very few wise souls here, or on any other investment forum open to the public.

Roth is a good idea, especially for a young person as the growth isn't taxable. You can open it in many places, and move it any time you choose. I have mine with my online brokerage, and manage it myself. Do far better than any full-service broker.

Penny stocks are a waste of time. Buy real stocks that are depressed and cheap, but still sound and likely to recover. Much more successful. The penny area is near impossible to research, so scammers and cons are all over it. Many companies have no record of business at all.

What to invest in- depends on many things. This is a complex game, and if you are good, you can take what others think are wild risks. If you are not, it will all be risks and the same as gambling. Thus learning all you can and practicing with a simulator is the way to start. Good is a matter of opinion, but when all your portfolios are beating 100% annual gains, you aren't too bad. I manage 5, one of which was my mothers $16K CD cashed and invested for her three years ago in February. It's worth 99K today.

Critical to learn thoroughly if you do your own investing, and if you don't, you will never see returns much above Dow and exchange averages from hired brokers. That changes the entire picture- if you give it to someone else, it will go slow and tend to follow the general economy. The potential for real wealth is still there, but a long ways further out.

I hold only stocks, other than two mutual funds I should dump. I don't sell short or trade options, Forex/currency etc. This is because I do what I do well now. Better to master one area than be mediocre in three. I've been doing this 10 years, started with less than 10K. It has to start slow, because you must be cautious as you learn, and when you have a small amount of capitol you will have an equally small amount of gains. As your value grows, more money is working for you and the gains come faster. My last buy was about $91,000 on Dec. 31st; it's up $4500 so far and doing exactly what I forecast it would do. Assuming it stays on course, I will sell it at peak in about 4 months with an expected gain between 30-60K. Same game, but a lot more chips on the table. The trick is learning how to do the right things with the right stocks at the right time- and the game is always changing, so you have to be on top of it and able to change your strategy quickly to fit what the current situations are. Helps to be clairvoyant, but none of us are. However, most do develop an instinct if they are seriously involved.

There are books by the thousands, websites, newsletters from $50 to a grand a more a year offering advice. Study- you bet. However if you really want the best help, find a mentor- an experienced and successful investor who believes in you and will help coach you along. You probably know one even if you are unaware of it. Ask family, see it that's true.

Warren Buffet started as a teen. Good time to get in the game.

Relax! Your desire for a diversified portfolio is good - but you're not stuck for the next 45 years with the investments you pick today. People can and do restructure investments as time goes by. The Roth IRA is an excellent retirement investing vehicle - but you are limited to contributions of $5000 per year under current law. The choice of IRA custodian depends partly on what you want to invest in.

I recommend that you pick up a copy of "Mutual Funds For Dummies" - it covers all the basics you need to make intelligent fund decisions.

Hi Chad, you are awesome! 19 and thinking about saving money. The best advice I can give you is if you don't need the money anytime soon invest 100% of it in the market via ETFs in a Roth Account. A Roth account for someone that is young like you is the best deal on the planet because the earnings are tax free if you don't withdrawal your earnings until 59.5 years of age. You can always take out tax free what you put in i.e., your principal because that is an after-tax contribution. Here are some ETF ideas for you given your age but, you need to do your own research, these are just ideas.

EWC, QQQQ, IGE, DJP, IWW, ILF, PWV, VEU, DIA,SCHB, SPY. Given your initial investment pick one or two ETF SPY and QQQQ for example and split evenly between the two ETFs. To reduce your trading costs open an account at TD Ameritrade, Fidelity or Schwab and trade ETFs where the commission is free. Fidelity has 25 ishares available free of charge, TD Ameritrade has 101 ETFs free commission and Schwab has about 13 of their own ETFs that are commission free. As you increase your investment buy ETFs where you don't have to pay a commission and you can effectively dollar cost average i.e, buying fix dollar amounts each month to increase your positions or build new ones.

I think the Roth IRA is a good thing if you leave the money in for a long time. Penny stocks is a different thing. If you are talking about day trading, I know very little about it but I've heard on CNBC a couple years ago that about 80% of day-traders loses.

To Start Investing

It takes a long time to learn the stock market and for someone that wants to start investing in the market needs to decide what risk level he wants to take. CDs backed up by the government has about 3-4% annual return for the long term with a low risk. Bonds or Bonds Funds has about 5-7% annual return for the long term with a medium risk. Stocks or Stock Mutual Funds has about 8-10% annual return for the long term with a high risk and are more volatile than Bonds. Usually the more risk you take, the more return you will have, but not always. To see the Risk vs Return go to my photo: http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n620/Chief-1/R... The stock market is basally made up of stocks and bonds. Investment managers pick a group of stocks to make a mutual fund or a group of bonds to make a bond fund. They even put a mixture of stocks and bonds together and call it a Growth & Income Fund.

1- Mutual Funds: I like mutual funds because they have a group of stocks (could be around 100+) invested in different sectors, and manage by a professional. Managers have lots of schooling for investing in stocks, around 8 years. So I think managers can pick stocks better than I can. You can make a buy or sell order anytime of the day for mutual funds shares but it will not go in affect until the close of the day. There are lots of different kinds of mutual funds that does not charge any fees to buy it's shares and they are called Noload Funds. There are also some funds called Load Funds that charge about 5% of your investment. But what I don't like is the fact that most funds has trading restriction and you may not be able to trade more than 4 times a year. That's because it makes it hard for the fund to make a good return if there is to much trading in the fund, causing the fund manager to make more buys and sells and keep more cash on hand. Mutual funds are meant for long term investors.

2- Stocks: Stocks is more volatile than funds unless you spread you money in about ten different sectors and know witch sector will do best. And stock trading restriction is only a few days and that's something that I like. If you own stocks, you will need to keep up with all the company's business so you don't get stuck with a bad stock.

3- ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds): ETFs are like a mutual fund but trades like a stock and that is my main reason why I like ETFs. There are some ETFs that represents Index's. An Index is like S&P or DOW. Index's operate just like a mutual fund with a group of stocks in deferent sectors, manage by professionals. You can't buy Index's because they are not for sell. A company owns them. But you can buy a mutual funds or an ETF that has the same stocks as the Index they represent. There are a lots of different kinds of ETFs for someone to choose from. Some have 1x leverage, some have 2x leverage for aggressive investors, and some has 3x leverage for more aggressive investors. And there are some that represent almost every kind of sector.

You can find several good brokers that charge $8.00 and under, per stock trade and no fee on Noload Funds. Most broker websites have good research tools. Some popular broker websites are Fidelity, TD Ameritrade, E-trade, Scottrade and others. I think you need a min. of $500 (some sites $2,500) to open a broker account.

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