or would you like to look at this... You see, all you have is time. You dont want your memories to be filled with some candlestick charts. Its easy to outwit the traders and to get around the system and thats through time. At the age of 21, you have nothing but time on your hands. I say to place your cash in a plethera of dividend producing large caps that you know will apreciate over a ten year period. Then you can concentrate on the important things and some of the not-so-important things. . .
I'm a lonnnng time trader, and if you want to learn to trade this is what I think you should do. 1. Put $35K into something safe like a money market or bank. 2. Trade the balance like it's "all the money you got"... you'll probably lose most of it but learn some lessons. Then, try again with another $5K. 3. You will EVENTUALLY figure it out or not. No reason to be in a hurry... it will probably take you 10 years before you're ready to trade significant money. You're young enough so that's not a problem.
Thanks for your replies. And yes segv, I have been considering investing in real estate. Whether it would be more beneficial to buy rental properties to supplement my monthly income or find undervalued properties that need some work to flip them in a short period of time I'm still looking into....Guess it depends on the longer term health of R.E. in my area. Plus having a large amount of debt at my age and while still in school makes me a little nervous.
NO do not get into real estate right now. I worked at Wells Fargo in the 90s and I had to listen to more then one person who was behind on their loans. The wise man got into real estate at the beginning in 2002-2003. Its the fool who gets into real estate right now. Go through all of the articles on the internet. However, talk to people with experience. I can tell you that I was fielding calls from people who were behind on their loans as late as 1997 (and the housing bubble burst in 1992.) http://www.economy.com/home/products/housing/default.asp?src=hattp_economy This is a great report on housing, unfortunately, it costs $4000.
He is already in real estate. The question is whether he wants to liquidate and try his hand at trading, or keep or increase his real estate risk. My point is that I think it is very unwise to risk a nest egg in an attempt to trade. -segv
Risking my nest egg is the last thing I'd consider doing...I want to establish some safe long term investments with the majority of the money first...and then with a smaller percentage start trading small until I can get something going.....and I'm not 100% new to stock trading, not on the level that most others are on here but I'm very good with risk and don't plan on losing more than I can afford to.