I am newbie on investment

Hey, I would recommend opening an account with Vanguard. If you only have $1,000 dollars, I would recommend placing that into the S&P 500 Index Fund and leaving it there. As you make more money, place it into you Vanguard account in the money market (it should go there automatically) and once you build up your next $1,000, invest in a new index or mutual fund that is not directly correlated with the S&P 500 index fund. Once you have at least 2 funds that are not correlated, and a base (nest egg) of $2,000, I would than begin to look at picking individual stocks. Thats where the fun begins... But since you have a small amount of money to invest, you are not able to create a diversified portfolio of stable stocks and therefore should not consider investing in individual stocks just yet.

As I suggested you do with your index funds, I believe you should have a diversified portfolio of stocks as well. With you first two funds as your base, you must than build upon it with stocks that are appropriately dissimilar. For instance, you would not want to spend you next $1,000 on 3 different solar stocks, as they are all in the same industry. You should look to invest in at least 5 different industries. I would recommend mining, chemicals, consumer products, cyclicals, and even financials due to their distressed state. In terms of what stocks you should pick within these different sectors or industries, you must do your own research. I tend to pick an industry within a sector (take the food industry for instance) and figure out which publicly traded companies are competing within that space. From there I look at their price to earnings ratio, that is, their stock price times their net income, and attempt to discern what the industry norm is. For frozen foods, I would say it is between 6 and 10. If I found a company with a PE ratio of 5, I would than analyze its current financial condition. This involves understand key ratios that discribe the current state of a company. One of the more important in my mind is the ROI, or return on investment. If you can find a company that has been increase its ROI over that past three quarters, I would consider investing in it. Another key ratio I examine is the Debt/Assets ratio. If a debt/assets ratio is close to or above one, that means the company is facing liquidity constraints and may be in financial trouble in the near term. I look for companies that have a small amount of leverage, a low PE ratio, and an increasing ROI over the past three quarters. From there, I believe it is all about your intuition. If you become interested in a stock (say for instance, you go to the Apple store for the first time and think its an amazing business), use your own intuition to discern the attractiveness and growth potential of the business. While I have found my intuition to be useful in the past, I always ensure that the company I am analyzing has the sound fundamental ratios I mentioned above.

Let's make the following assumptions before we start on where to invest $1,000.00:
1. You have no credit card debt. (Paying off your credit cards gives you a relative return of +18% per year compared with having a credit card balance.)
2. You are current on all your regular bills (utilities, property taxes, mortgage).
3. You have a substantial amount (say, three to six months after-tax income) stashed in a money market account so when your car drops its transmission as you're taking your kid to the hospital after you've been laid off, you don't find yourself living under a bridge.
4. You won't need this money for rent, taxes, daughter's wedding, etc., for at least five years.
Okay, where to put it? A mutual fund that tracks the S&P 500 or the Dow Jones Industrial Average is probably a good place to start, but only if you're willing to take a lower return on your money in exchange for not having to actively manage your investment.
What I'd suggest is reading everything you can about money and business. At the Motley Fool, there's an article called "Why Warren Buffett is a Better Investor Than You". It turns out that it's because he does the work necessary to make profitable decisions in the stock market.
Read the comments made by other members on Social Picks and the message boards on places like AOL Finance and Yahoo! Finance. Then do your own due diligence and make your own decision. Make up your mind before you begin to take responsibility for your own investment decisions, rather than blaming bad advice.
Don't take anybody's formula for stock picking without reverse engineering it until you know why it works or doesn't work.
Don't invest in something you don't understand. If you know what fixed income arbitrage is, and can explain it to somebody else, then go ahead and invest in a company that does that. (Of course, if you know what fixed income arbitrage is, it raises the question of how come you're looking for a home for a measly thousand bucks, yes?) If you don't, pick something else.
In my case, that would be Wal-Mart, Schlumberger (I used to cover oil and gas for a newspaper in oil country), Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan, and a few others. You can develop your own formula for screening stocks, but personally, I like dividends, I like companies that show evidence of good management by increasing profits, I like companies that aren't overpriced (which I define as p/e below ROE) and I like stocks with share prices above $10.00. Look at the IBD Smart Select ratings (I read Investors Business Daily at the public library) and check those against the list you pick based on the above criteria. Get the latest annual or quarterly report for the companies that score above 90.
Be prepared to guess wrong and lose your shirt. But remember, it's only money.

With a $1000 value investing and fundamentals wont really doing anything for you. I don't mind Dan's recommendations of placing the cash in a fund, Vanguard are a good fund manager. But i can place that money in the bank and get a six percent return. I presume your in the market to make money and for the excitement of it. With a one thousand you want to be a trader not an investor, i would treat that $1000 as risk capital you want to find stock that people are buying heavily, the more irrational the surge the better because people see that something is being bought heavily and they don't want to be left behind. wait till the stock is oversold or overbought and when it starts to retrace place your trade. On 16 July i found Bank of America was being heavily sold and placed a trade. All you needed was a bit of a bear market rally and some stupid rhetoric that the banking industry wont go down and bang 77.48 percent return in less then two weeks. I would never buy BAC based on fundamentals yet if you know what to look for you can make some good returns but it is highly risky. Check out Avon and McCormick and Co.

I thought i would give you a different point of view.

Happy Trading

Buy the SSO, double long S&P 500 if you hold for the long term I expect you will be happy with the results. Especially given that as you said you have limited investment experience

I agree with John Pantic, with regards to being a trader and not an investor for the $1000. Use that to build yourself a base that you can start investing with for more long term stability and diversity. The Financials are right now cheap and on the rise. Lots of volatility to play off of and can be a quick, but risky means to some short term gains.

MBI
Last Price Today's Change
$7.67 1.74 +29.34%

ABK
Last Price Today's Change
$3.79 1.27 +50.40%

Mind you, this is a speculative approach and is considerably riskier then Indexed and Mutual funds.
BUT, if you are interested in the potential of high gains over short time, this may be your option if you can stomach the risk.

nuncprolunch had good advice for every investor! (I am just a bit more aggressive)

Let us know what you do!

if you are a noobie it would be foolish to begin any type of individual stock picking

I agree with all of you. I think this is a great discussion for beginning investors. What we are getting into is how much risk you would like to take on with your first $1,000. My reason for first investing in a low risk mutual find is that it provides you with a base or "nest egg" within your portfolio. Once you have that, you can wait until you save up your next $1,000 to pick individual stocks and get a little more risky. You can also continue building on your base with another index or mutual fund.

When I started investing, I dived right in with $2,000 and made quite a bit of money. In three months I had turned $2,000 into $3,200. I was excited and cocky and never stopped to catch my breathe as I continued to rely on short term swing trades and a few long term trades. I wish I had taken my profits and placed them into a more reliable investment.

Of course, I ended up losing all of my profits and some as I continued to trade. With $1,800, I had to start all over again. Because I'm in college, I generated very little cash to put into my portfolio. So what did I do? I placed what I had left into a mutual fund (thats doing quite well) and spent my downtime studying investment books, doing fantasy trading at sites like social picks, and researched/followed the market and some industries of interest. After a little bit of this, and after I saved up my cash again, I started to invest in stocks a little more knowledgeably and I am pleased to say it has worked out well.

If you're a beginning investor, read "A Random Walk Down Wall Street."
Changed my investing life.

That first paragraph is quite repetitive, sorry about that.

spend time learning about investments long before you take advice from anyone else

Books. Invest 30% of it in books. Then do some virtual trading (paper). If not you'll might as well flush it down the toilet.

Seriously, get educated first... don't lose it for nothing.

Pay any outstanding consumer debt you might have and set aside an emergency fund before investing.

@ campus capitalist, if a random walk down wall street changed your life then why do you make individual stock picks? just a question

spend time on real estate growth details

random walk down wall street is a good book for an academic opinion but is based on many flawed assumptions

you sould not invest at this time, put it in a savings acount and wait for the the market to take a direction. right now is a great time for the speculators, untill you learn the market don't do it learn the the folks you are asking the question of. Gene

I agree with Walter Thatcher, heed his comments

If you wait for the market to be healthy many of the gains will be long gone

Just buy the SPY

It is better to invest minimal amounts especially if you are a noob at this. It is a very risky business IMO 1800petmeds

It is better to invest minimal amounts especially if you are a noob at this. It is a very risky business IMO 1800petmeds

It depends on your objectives (income, growth, etc) and your risk tolerance (conservative, aggressive, etc). If you know nothing about investing than doing some reading would be best. I would recommend How to Make Money in Stocks by Bill O'Neill. Also, subscribe to his newspaper, the Investor Business Daily, would help you a lot. I would stay away from U.S. equities because the inflation will eat up any returns you will have in the market. Good luck.