Less volatile than the overall markets. Although to be fair, the markets themselves have done very well the last 6+ years. This gives you a good idea of how much better the A-shares have been over the past 50 years or so. http://www.thebuffett.com/performance.html#.VVZIrnzF_yU Obviously the B shares at ~ $145 a share these days is better for most investors, and is the only option for most. Even if you've got a quarter million or a million bucks or more, the B shares are more liquid and allow you to get better diversification - I personally rarely have any more than 5% of my money in any one stock.
I think it also depends on where you are and what you're comfortable with. It kind of feels odd me being conscious of this now, but although Berkshire has a stellar track record and the B shares are far more accessible than the A shares, I'm British and I slightly struggle with looking at a $145 stock price. In the UK market we're just not as used to such a large denomination for an individual stock. It feels quite odd that I've just noticed it. Obviously I don't have individual exposures to GOOG, AAPL etc... I know some people in certain other markets also think in a similar fashion - even more extreme is somewhere like the Singapore market, where most stocks are denominated at the equivalent of under US$10.
But the $$$ (or € or £) price of a stock doesn't make any difference. If it gets ridiculously big then it can cause some issues with diversifying but even at a couple hundred USD per share you are still looking at buying more than one (in most cases) at a time to keep the commission down.
As everyone here I suggest Microsoft too because of its reliability and I would go easly at first. Don't give up on early stages if you keep losing, it's everyone's fate the fact that we suck at first but eventually we're going to surely better.
I would say something like Amazon, Yahoo, Microsoft, or Apple. These seem to be pretty good stocks for beginners, of course depending on how much money you have. You must understand that any time you invest you are risking some of your money. Good luck trading my brother.
I'll throw my latest new purchase out here. Great for the long term investor, a bit pricy at the moment but overtime that won't make much of a difference. Big and stable company in a growing industry, great dividend history: currently a 3% yield and according to my estimates a roughly 7% increase in dividends per year for the next few years. One of the real safe bets when it comes to long term income. Johnson & Johnson.
I think this is the most important part. Index funds allow you to spread risk better to absorb losses better, but also allow newer traders a little more insight into the market they're getting into before they jump straight into the big leagues. It's not 'guaranteed' like bonds are, but it doesn't take nearly as long and it's a valuable education into market practice.
Thanks for sharing that link, I'm definitely going to have to check that out. Does putting so little of a percentage of your money come back to haunt you or do you see a positive profit?
Apple is a good one because, due to its' vicious fan base, they will always sell products. Microsoft just experienced a pretty big hit, so I would not rely on that one as of right now.
I think you're minimizing your risk of any permanent losses greatly by diversifying in such a way. There are thousands and thousands of stocks and other securities out there. It's pretty easy (although time consuming) overall to find at least a couple dozen different places to put your money at any one time. GT Advanced Technologies and China Northeast Petroleum are 2 fairly recent examples of companies I had a few bucks in that went bankrupt. I am very glad that I put a very small % of my nestegg in both of those. Of course there are other investments like Apple, Netflix, Amazon, and others that go so well that I sometimes wish I would have bought more or perhaps not taken profits as soon as I did on some, etc. But overall I think it's safer to limit position sizes and not be afraid to take profits when valuations reach a point where they're hard to justify - like NFLX and AZMN have become IMO.
