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Comment by erikpukinskis | Hacker News Reader

Asking "strangers", i.e. experts in internet forums related to a stock, is a key step in learning enough about a market to trade intelligently in it. Your comment reads a little like "investors asking baby questions should trade baby securities". But just asking people's opinions on a stock doesn't mean you are a low skill investor. Quite the opposite really. People who si questions tend to get smart.

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this is a tech forum. any response you get should not be assumed to be from an expert.

I've come across more doctors and bankers on HN than on any other social bookmarking site I've ever read. It's not limited to a "tech forum".

He flippantly asked what to do with his 4 shares. Doubt he'd get a dcf analysis.

I'm actually being completely serious with my question -- it was the first investment I ever made, and I figure someone here might have some insight on whether I should just sell them or not. $200 is still $200, right? Plus maybe someone else is in a similar boat, albeit with more shares.

Only basic thing that comes to mind is: Don't buy $200 worth of stock. If you pay a broker $10 commission, you're already down 10% as soon as you decide to do it ($10 to buy and $10 to sell). Hell, even if you're buying $2000 worth of stock, you've lost 1% right off the bat.

The stock market is a casino for rich people, not us.

Anyone making an engineering level salary in the US should be saving a portion of their money and investing in the stock market. There are a wide variety of options that involve no commissions and allow you to own a broad cross section of the market. The Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF is a good place to start. As are Vanguard's age based funds and automatically reallocate to more conservative positions as you get older.

Writing off the stock market as a "casino for rich people" is a good way to make yourself poorer.

I wish there was a crash course on this when I was in college. I've been meaning to understand stock market, how to get involved. The most I got was 401k but I don't even look at my Fidelity. I know certain industries are projecting or doing well currently... but ugh.

Most of the information you need to know can fit on an index card:

http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2016/01/07/index-67f786d0f1f...

I think the parent meant don't waste trivial amounts of money buying individual stocks rather than don't invest at all.

I'm picking stocks with a small fund (started with $1500), and I'm up 300% in the past 12 months. I'm just doing it for fun, though.

The best answer you got was to not invest in individual stocks at all, and instead to globally diversify using index funds. For example, you can own basically every significant publicly traded company in the world by holding just VTI and VXUS (Vanguard ETFs). Or equivalent mutual funds. Much simpler and lower risk.

I never bought any more individual shares like that, it was really just for the emotional aspect of making my first investment after finally having the money to do it. Right now I have my company 401k and Schwab ETFs.

There's no way for people to answer this honestly without understanding your personal tax situation and financial goals. And it's not enough money to concern a financial adviser by itself.

Keep in mind, you're gonna pay brokerage fees and capital gains if you try to handle this by yourself. None of that amounts to alot of money, but enough to cut into your profits if you screw something up and the IRS gets to you. Best advice is, if you're far from retirement, just figure out how to get it rolled into a Roth IRA or something unless you actually need the cash.

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