I bought my first stocks today and so far I've made 14 cents.

Actually it cost me $6.95 so I'm down $6.81 I guess.
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Why is the TD Ameritrade website so bad? Like nothing is loading for me.
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Yeah, but isn't the 14 cents exciting? It's money that you made a pure capitalist.
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You still have the equity in those stocks so your net value is +$.14
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I believe he's referring to trading fees, which are nothing but Wall Street taking his hard-earned money for executing an automated transaction that takes 1/1000th of a second.
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Works fine for me.

It has quite a few tabs you have to navigate to find what you sometimes want. The search function is pretty good though.

I find tracking stocks on the Watchlist to be very user friendly and helps me keep organized about stocks I've wanted to watch.
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Obligatory "index funds are better than stocks unless you really know what you're doing" reply. (And even if you know what you're doing, index funds are still probably better than what you're doing.)
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They say when the average joe jumps into the stock market it's time to get out. Good luck! :-)
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I've had money in the market for years in various forms but I just purchased my first stocks 10 days ago. This financial adviser also purchased some stuff he recommended but I picked four different stocks that he put in my portfolio.
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Congratulations! You're in for a fun ride of lifelong investing. 6.95 is actually pretty good for a trade, there are still firms out there that charge much more. The obvious strategy is that you save up and buy more of the same stock at a time to lower your average fees per share.

If you get into the etf game (which I highly recommend if you are serious about long term wealth building) there are many brokerages that trade commission free (Vanguard to name one). They diversify your investment across many different companies so you don't have all your eggs in one basket. There is a lot of great info in this thread about them.

Use us as a resource and look at this as a learning experience, there are some really knowledgeable people on here.
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This, times infinity.
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Bogelhead here. It's the best strategy there is IMO, but the least exciting.
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I definitely agree, although it's not inherently bad to have a small percentage of your income in individual stocks if you feel so compelled. This should only be after you've got something like 10%+ percentage of your income going to retirement investment vehicles (401k/IRAs).

I bought my first individual stocks earlier this year as well. That's after 5 years of ramping my 401k/Roth IRA contributions up to 15%. The money I then invested in individual stocks is IN addition this amount, not in place of those investments. It's currently 6% of my total portfolio and I don't really plan to ever have individuals stocks be more than 10% of my total portfolio.
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I'm looking to start dabbling with penny stocks to get my feet wet. I figure in the first couple of years while I learn, its the equivalent of going to the casino. Most likely I'll come out with empty pockets, but its fun...and in this case, hopefully a learning experience. And if a penny hits along the way, bonus.
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I think that's the way to look at it. If you want to mess with individual stocks because it's fun and/or interesting, go for it. Just know that it's a game and that if you are purely looking to maximize your returns, you're almost certainly better off going the boring route.
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