First of all, ignore Jim Cramer!! Stay as far away from him as possible. The little bits of truth he speaks are not worth wading through the coin tosses, just

First of all, ignore Jim Cramer!! Stay as far away from him as possible. The little bits of truth he speaks are not worth wading through the coin tosses, just stay away. Next, when you're trying to figure out which stocks to buy, forget about the stocks. Don't look to PE's, and all the other ratios to figure out where the market is going. Look at the world around you. Look at where the /world/ is going. Which things are going to be hot 20 years from now? Those are the things that are going to be your biggest wins. You only need one or two or three really big winners to set you for life and you have many years to find them. Don't look at the latest headlines to decide where to put your money. You may make money trading stocks, buying at $22 and selling at $26, it is possible and that is very likely to happen. But that is not the goal. Four dollars is not the goal. Four million dollars is the goal and that takes years and years. So, take your time. Don't invest any real dollars for a year. Take the dollars you would invest and put them into books and education and paper trading. I know it sounds lame and where's the fun in that, but if fun is what you are looking for, go to vegas. Poker is more exciting and easier to figure out how to win and you can make a lot of money with a $2,000 bank roll if you play your cards right. If you are just absolutely itching to put that money into the market, look in to index funds. Index funds are easily managed funds that don't cost a lot of money to keep running but are still diversified. Put your money into one of those, like buy the QQQQ or something -- IT MAY CRASH right after you buy it, the point isn't to make money, the point is to pay attention. Pay attention to the short term swings in the market, but don't buy or sell based on them. Look at the fundamentals of the entire market to decide when to make big moves. Make little moves on little time frames, big moves on big time frames. For example, you could have looked at the markets a couple years back and known that the future didn't look so hot. You probably didn't know when everything was going to collapse, but you knew the fundamentals weren't looking very good. Okay, so then you might want to tend toward market underweight. Anyway, lots of useless advice summed up in a couple words: Don't get trigger happy. Use your head. Practice makes perfect. Stocks are not a get rich quick scheme.