Basically the stock market is a place where you can buy pieces of companies and expect for their value to come up and when that happens you sell those shares and make a profit. More technical info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_market "A stock market or equity market is the aggregation of buyers and sellers (a loose network of economic transactions, not a physical facility or discrete entity) of stocks (shares); these are securitieslisted on a stock exchange as well as those only traded privately."
There's a wealth of valuable info on these forums here at this website. And the books and authors many of us have recommended will be a huge help.
Yep, just a matter of looking up and start investing, good luck determined, one day you might be as successful as JR here.
What books would you recommend reading? I have a decent knowledge of investing and economics, but I'm no expert and have never invested real money before.
I'd start with Benjamin Graham (especially "The Intelligent Investor") and Peter Lynch - "Beating the Street", "One Up on Wall Street", etc.
You could hook up to websites such as investopedia and books like the intelligent investor to learn more about the stock market, and there are many threads in this forum with priceless information and tips from many investors, you better atart reading if you're serious about investing. All the best
Thanks for sharing those titles JR, I am going to try them because I feel that we need good bases to start with.
The stock market is essentially a place where companies issues shares to investors (yourself) for a cut or percentage in their company. For example, I have company A, and I want to raise additional revenue to expand my business, what I do is approach the Stock Market in my country or region, and apply for my company to be listed, say I issue a million shares and you buy two hundred and fifty thousand worth of shares in my company, you now become an owner in my company, owing a quarter of my company. Of course, I myself would have shares in the company and so I would own the lion's share while all other investors own smaller portions, so it's a quite simple concept, just think of it as buying into a company
It's a win win business like you say investor, considering your company is doing well, but in fact it's mega complex.
