Phatte, if you work and your company has a 401 plan, put as much as you can into it and allocate 75% to a value fund and 25% to a growth fund. Most of the companies usually match a certain % too.

If you have $1000 only, buy index funds (SPY) and keep adding to it every month. Markets go up more often than they go down and if you add some money every month for the next 20 years, you should have quiet a bit by then. If you need money in 1-2 years then it is hard to say.

What I'm showing here is holding short-term from a day to weeks and sometimes months. Doing this more for short-term gain than retirement savings.