I've done it for a while. I use https://www.folioinvesting.com/.

Short story: Great option for investing regularly, and staying diversified without paying a ton of fees.

Long story: The fees are something like $250 fixed for a year, but includes 250 trades a month, which allows you to buy and balance lots of stocks regularly. I usually own stocks in between 50 and 100 companies.

For example say you think Biotech will do well - not just 1 company but the whole sector - you can just tell them buy $XXXXXX in https://www.folioinvesting.com/rtg/folio.jsp?name=Biotechnology , and it will automatically spread your investment in 30 of the biggest Biotech stocks.

To do that with a regular broker, even with low fees like $5/trade you would pay $150 and it would be a lot of work, but here just a couple of clicks and it's done with no extra fees.

If you want to invest money regularly like out of each paycheck you again save a lot of trade fees each time.

And, it's not like mutual funds because you can buy any stock you want and manage yourself.

Also, depends on how much you have to invest. You need at least say $10,000, otherwise fees will eat out of any your gains.

Like, say you use a cheap online broker with $5 trades - so a buy & a sell costs $10.

- If you invest $100 you'll lose 10% just in fees. Don't do it.
- If you invest $1,000 you'll lose 1% just in fees. Not a great start.
- If you invest $10,000 you'll lose 0.1% in fees. More bearable as long as you don't trade too frequently.

Speaking of investments... something funny happened.

I found that I had a copy of Ninja Gaiden Sigma (PS3) which had forgotten about and it was brand new, sealed. I didn't want to play it now (already played the X360 original) so I put it up on eBay starting for $1, not expecting more than a few Dollars for this 6 year old game.

It sold for over $100... which confused the heck out of me. I thought the buyer was trying to scam me. Then I found out the original release of that game is a collectors item and people sell them for $200+. Some guy is asking $500 for that game!

Should I invest in some games that might become collectors items? :D

thats great advice. Thing this is I dont have 10k to dive in the water, would it make sence to just play with example 100 to test the waters and get a feel for things? 100 is no loss.

Investing in games, music and art is too risky. The best you can do is to keep your old games and hope that their value increase later.

It is aways good to invest.  It's also good to start small so if you make a mistake it's not the end of the world.

Personally, I do my investing directly, through my bank online.  I pay a commission per trade, which works well because I don't trade frequently - just a few times per quarter.

My biggest advice would be to learn about the industry you are buying into.  Research it.  Understand it.  And attempt to remove yourself from the situation emotionally.

all you have to do is find a broker, most major banks do it. you can either have a DIY which I prefer and you just log on to their website and create a watchlist with the stock codes and simply hit the buy or sell button, or you can contact a specialist broker who you need to ring and they offer advice but ofcourse they also cost whereas DIY is free, you just get a fee taken when you hit buy or sell, usually about 0.03%

The best way to start is to lose your money.
True story.

Ive always wanted to actually invest in MS but never seemed to take the plunge.

I just got boring old government bond mutual funds, in a low risk/moderate risk capacity.

The best time to start is with about 15k dollars, then stock traders will give you something like 30 free trades a month. Every trader has some kind of requirement for you to get free trades, so look that up first.
Personally, I stick with tech stocks, but dip into penny stocks here and there.
I'm assuming that what you're trying to do is invest in a company that you think will be big someday... it's tough to do it like that, but it's fine.
One of the main tenets I've noticed though, is that with stocks you really need to be able to invest a lot if you want to make a lot.