Stock Market- thinking about buying for the first time.
 

My birthday is coming up and I'm considering asking for some cash to use in the stock market. I know it's not the best way to make money but I figure it might be a good experience. There's two things I've considered looking into: 1) Sirrius, the satellite radio company (I know, I'm a little behind...), and 2) Some kind of VOIP (voice over IP) company like Vonage. What I'm wondering is where I how I should go about finding out if they're worth investing in right now. To you out there that are experienced, imagine that you think a certain technology might have potential to continue rising in popularity. How would you personally commence researching which company to look into? Take VOIP for example. Vonage advertises the most so I'm the most familiar with them. Should I assume that they'll hopefully lead the potential growth of the VOIP technology because I see their adds a bunch, or should I go to Google and begin running searches for VOIP articles and start taking names?

Thanks a bunch if you've made it this far ;) I appreciate any and all advice!
-Tim

From what I understand, Cisco Systems is doing a lot of voice ip stuff, and has been. Thats all i know.

DISCLAIMER: The following is not professional advice and should not be construed as being so. What I am about to say is for ... entertainment purposes only.

I think Vonage is a privately held company, but ther should be plenty other companies that offer VOIP.

Check out Finance.yahoo.com and look up the company you want to research. After that, take a look at their fundamentals by checking out the key statistics link in the left hand column. To find definitions of the numbers and ratios displayed, check out investopedia.com.

That'll get you started. :)

I'm not so sure about voice over ip - not with the likes of Skype around, who, with a distributed Napster/BitTorrent style architecture, are able to offer a similar level of service, for free.

If broadband continues its advance everywhere, soon most populated areas of the world will be plugged into high-speed connections and will likely have WiFi splashing all over everything. Say someone makes a Skype-like phone that connects to a free WiFi point and is then able to bit-torrent voice signal to another phone of the same type - all for free - a la Skype is now for pc-to-pc connections - that's a huge chunk of the telephone, voip, cellphone network just gone - boom - finished.

All it would take is a small independant firm to build a receiver that sniffs out open WiFi connections, and code a small-device version of Skype.

They actually have that exact thing for Wifi equiped Pocket PCs right now. I can imagine it is more of a pain in the butt to find a hot spot, and connecting and all of that, than a cell phone, but there is certainly room to grow.

single stocks are a sucker purchase. Personally I like funds.

If you want to invest in VOIP, be aware its nothing new. My father and I have been doing it for years, with programs such as Net2Phone (I don't know if anyone remembers it). But it does seem like more people are becoming "aware" that its outthere and its potential.

Good luck with buying stocks. I would not have any idea where to start. :)

Start here:

http://www.bloomberg.com
http://www.advfn.com
http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/home.asp
http://www.investorguide.com/
http://www.investorwords.com/
http://finance.yahoo.com/

3 Words: DO YOUR HOMEWORK

Your putting your money all in tech stocks. You may want to diversify a bit, that way if techs get hit you dont drop much. Maybe try a good mutual fund? Read what the analyst's say about Sirius. It closed at 6 friday, and i.ve seen it in the low 5's not too long ago (down from about 8 dollars a share). If you buy and hold, like I do, you cant go wrong. Maybe look at Harley Davidson, it got hit hard a few weeks back and is a bargain now. I'm buying it up..good luck

Thanks a ton for all the advice guys. I don't have the time right not to respond to each post individually, but I'm taking them all into consideration and looking into all the links ;)

The advice is much appreciated. Thanks again
-Tim

I couldn't agree more with this statement. It is very possible to make money in the stock market by being in the right place at the right time, but you can't depend on luck every single time. I made many a silly mistake when I first started and wouldn't want to see anyone else go through that ;) .