I've finally begun to save a (small) bit of income, and I'm interested in some kind of investment, and stocks piqued my interest. Do you have any experience with this system? How useful/gamed is it in this day and age? Worth a shot?
I'm not a financial expert or anything so take this with a grain of salt, but I'd look into mutual funds. Mine's been pretty flat so far but I only started my account in May. It claims, based on historical data: (time period - average annual returns) 1yr - 11.77% 3yr - 19.63% 5yr - 16.50% 10yr - 8.11% (Vanguard 500 Index Fund Admiral, for reference) E: Hmm, apparently it shows different percents if I google it vs. if I'm just logged in. Odd.
When the market is at historic highs, it might not be the best time to start investing. I would save in a savings account, and wait for a downturn, which in all likelihood will happen in the next year or so. I doubt it will be a meltdown like what happened in '08, but you can make a lot more money when prices are depressed with a lot less risk.
It's best to slowly feed into index funds. They average better or same returns as mutual funds but don't have high percentage fees! The market is unusually high right now for the amount of risk out there (greece and ukraine/russia) so you might take it easy for a bit.
So how can one know when the market will be lower - where can I see the numbers?