What was your first trade?

Some of us look back fondly on a time long ago when we purchased our very first stock -- me included, though I was acting on shaky advice and the stock dropped in value by half before it could be unloaded. What did I learn? Do my own homework and don't listen to the mother-in-law.  Lesson ONE.

Many others find themselves drawn to the market for the first time in months like this, when volatility causes the markets to be in the news every day. At TradeKing, community members Casey and UPod moderate a group for beginning investors that Casey created back in February, and it’s grown to be our most successful group. The idea, as Casey put it, was to create “a group for beginning investors to ask questions and learn from the collective knowledge of the TK community.”

One of the great threads in the forum of Beginning Investors contains stories of that first investment that various community members have had. TradeKing community member Keepingitsimple shared his long story, which included nearly four years of study and paper trading before getting his feet wet.  Now that he’s been trading actively for a year, he writes, “It’s your money, don’t let other people tell you how to spend it.”

UPod shared that a particular investment guru got him interested in investing. He took a different path than Keepingitsimple; in fact, he was so excited to start that he wired in money to his shiny new TradeKing account and got started right away after reading a book. “I just jumped right in head first,” he says. “It’s been a learning experience ever since. Investing and following the market is now a hobby and a passion for me. I absolutely love it. There’s never a dull moment.”

These experienced investors lend a hand to folks like community member mjuaire,  who writes: “For someone like myself, who literally funded my account with TradeKing yesterday, and has no clue whatsoever what I’m doing, I truly appreciate your posts. I only have a little $$ in an IRA I opened up, but everyone has to start somewhere, I just figured it was time for me.”

Does this sound like you? Or do you have experience, or a first-time trading story, that you’d like to share? Come join the conversation in our Beginning Investors group!

My very first money trade was about 10 years ago now as I recall. A company called Applied Digital (ADSX at the time - Now DIGAD). As I recall, my initial purchase price was around $2 and sold it about 3 weeks later at just under $4.

I'm guessing many first timers get lucky on their first trade or three, but inevitably come back to the 'gotta do your homework' crowd. Hopefully before they run out of money. As it turned out I had to take a hiatus for while during my wife's cancer back then, but have been going strong again since late 2007.

It certainly is not for everyone and it takes work to be successful at it like anything does. You are going to hit some walls and be taken by surprise at least a few times over your lifetime of investing, but the only thing you can do is learn from what goes wrong AND from what goes right.

Very first? AIG, about a month ago. My next buy was Yamaha Gold, and that turned out ok, and GFI did me good to. But lately, AUY and SLW are not treating me well. I did well on my first buy of GNW also, but not the last one. They blind sided me. And took a lot of my money with them.

I have faith in the precious metals, and I will sit on them till they hatch.

The biggest lesson I have learned, is not to hurry.

I put $1000 dollars into Excel Maritime (EXM) back in may.  Over about a week it ran up 30% where I sold it just as it peaked after earnings.  I thought I was something else (I didn't even know what the baltic dry index was at the time.)  Beginner's luck, but it got me hooked, I've not missed many market opens since (that's roughly a 6 am wake-up time for an Arizona guy.

i work at jb hunt ,so my first trade was jb hunt stock .

i got in at 32 rode it to 40 and stayed in .

fear and greed are dangerous -cost me 20k$ this year

My first trade was BHP Billiton about six years ago.  I bought 100sh at 19.80 before the commodities bubble, forgot all about it as it went to 98.00, then sold it off in thirds as the bubble popped this summer.  When it gets into the low-mid 20s I'll try it all over again.