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Warren Buffett is the best investor of our time, perhaps of all time.  Does this fact mean that the way to riches is to track and emulate his investment moves?  Well, if you are a billionaire looking to maintain your financial empire, then this is probably a good strategy.  But if you are still working on your own financial mega entity, then you are best served going off on your own.  Studying his strategies and investment philosophy is certainly beneficial to any investor, and will strengthen your mindset toward the markets.  But do not think that by matching the moves of a mega investor that you will become one too.  You must hone your own strategy to first achieve that level, and then when you are in the same vehicle can you drive on the same road to the financial stratosphere.

In dealing with financial markets, there are only two paths to take - Either free or regulated.  A free market relies on the investors and entities to run the market.  When one of the two makes a bad call, they must be allowed to fail.  When someone fails someone else will prosper, bringing the market back to equilibrium.  This is clearly not the environment that the US Market has established, therefore making it fall into the regulated grouping.  The problem with the regulated approach, and the current problem with our markets, is that regulation must maintain a pace ahead of those in the markets.  This is because entities will find ways to benefit from loops in the regulation, and some of these methods will carry a great deal of risk.  And the bottom line is that those working for profit will always be slightly ahead of those working to regulate.  The market will once again gain strength, but while the corrective regulation is being worked into the process losses will be taken.

Once you have found a stock to buy, and have your online brokerage account set up, it only takes two buttons to buy a stock.  The hardest part, and it isn’t hard at all, is calculating how many shares of the stock you want to buy.  Once you divide the current share price into the funds available, you simply type that information (stock ticker and number of shares) into the trade page.  Most will use a market order, which simply means I want it at the current price (or as close as possible).  Then you simply click on “place order”, and your order is in and you just bought a stock.

Each of the online brokers (Scottrade, TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, etc) provide everything you need to buy and sell stocks through them.  They are the vehicle that you will use, once you know what stock it is you want to buy.  One major item that used to separate them was the price you had to pay to buy and sell a stock through them, but now even that has pretty much evened out.  As I write this, Scottrade is $7 a trade which I believe is the lowest by a dollar or two.  Once you select the online broker that you will use, you simply need to log on to the site and set up your account.  Once it is funded, you are ready to start trading.

Like with most things, there is a lot of background noise around the actions that one actually needs to know when buying stocks.  Although there are several different types of orders to use when buying or selling stocks, most people only need to know one.  As long as they are not buying tiny companies, a market order is the only order they need to know.  A market order says I want this many shares of this stock right now at the current price.  If the company you are buying stock of has a daily average volume of at least 300,000 shares, and you are buying less than 1,000 shares, a market order will get you very close to the current price.  Once you recognize this, you only need to figure how many shares of what company to buy.