Don't let the name fool you. Check PowerInvestor. They have lots of information and resources for learning what things are and how they work. They really aren't trying to sell you anything and even if they were it is cheap for financial information. Second thing to do is consider your mental state. Can you deal with losing money? Do you need to see daily increases in your portfolio to be happy? Can you stomach seeing your money dwindle for 4-5 months at a stretch? All these things factor into if and how you enter the market. Are you an investor? Picking issues that are sound and will rise slowly over time? Are you a trader? Looking for returns daily or weekly or even every minute? The market is a vengeful mistress who is very unforgiving and very unpredictable. You also have to accept the fact that people will always tell you about how they made a killing in this or that but you will never hear about the 3 other stocks they got killed in. Even those "gurus" in the market don't do as well as they would have you think. If they were making so much money trading the market, would they spend their time selling you their "system"? But This isn't to say you can't do well in the market. With a resonable amount of effort you can make it pay off, but you need some discipline to decide how you will enter trades and how you will get out of them. You need to keep emotion out of things because feelings cost real money. Decide on how much help you want. You can get a full service broker who will cost you in commissions, but hold your hand. You can get a mid range broker, or a discounter or go bare-bones with Interactive Brokers trading for $0.01/share but getting no assistance. You can go high tech with automated trading systems that will make hundreds of trades a day for you, or you can go as simple as a notebook and a pencil. Once you get through answering all these questions, you will be able to decide if you will be active or passive in the market. Good luck......