What information should you research before you invest in a stock?

I was just wondering what information you need to Research before you invest in a stock so that i can help my great uncle with it, without giving him the wrong information. Thanks in advance!|||The things one would research is how strong is its financials, management, product/services, and revenue/profit growth compared with its competitors in the same sector. With this you will have to develop your trade plan or system that tells you when to buy and when to sell. You can use company fundamentals or stock price technicals or a combination of both. You need to position size through money management and not load the boat on one issue. And use stop losses for risk management. There is no guarantee you will make money.





Your broker should have some educational resources and stock scanning tools. Check those first and then sign up for free at moneyshow.com and place topics in the search box to get the links to those free videos and podcasts for you to watch and listen.|||Before you invest any money in the stock market, you should have your trading plan defined. Most people lose money in the stock market because they invest with passion instead of intelligence. If you buy Apple (AAPL) and it falls $10 the next day, you may panic and sell the stock at a loss of $10 per share of what you invested. After that, the same stock may rise for two days and you could have made a profit if you had not sold your position.





What is your level of risk? How much are you investing? What is your targets for gain and what loss percentage will cause you to sell?


(These answers are much more important than the stock picks that will come in two more steps.)





The next step is to find out how the overall market is moving. Is the market rising or falling? Use some measure that you feel comfortable with to see if the trend is upward or downward. It is far easier to make money buying stocks when the market is rising than it would be to buy a stock when the market is falling.





Now, you can look for stocks. Talk to your uncle about what he is looking for as investment opportunities and select stocks that meet those criteria. If you great uncle is older, then focus on finding good dividend paying stocks and simply have dividend check sent to you each quarter. That is a safe reliable way to make some money from the stock market. If you feel riskier, look for stocks in industries that are moving upward. Around Christmas, retail is strong. During down markets, restaurants seem to overcome market lethargy.





Right now, gold mining stocks are booming and may continue to rise as gold prices rise.





Good Luck.|||Technical Analysis is the most consistently profitable way to pick stocks.



Fundamentals for individual traders is not a particularly useful strategy as it is extremely time consuming and you will always be a step behind the city traders who have already priced any relevant analysis into the share price.



Technical analysis is universal and once you learn what to look for, you can very quickly scan through many stocks to find an investment opportunity which you can then do further research on.|||You should get advice from your friends and relatives as to the phone number of a trusted financial adviser.