Stock market is no casino. It's a place where you can make a living out of and the eariler in life you start is better because your stocks can compound in values over the years and by the time you're in college, you may be actually paying your college fee from the savings you have though stocks that you started a long time ago while you were just a 13/14 year old kid. Buffett kind of did that way and he knew where to look and only what to look. If you know where to look and what to look within those thousands of stocks you can easily beat the market.  Go for themes first and then the story. I know we all talk about apple but we don't talk as much about Chevrol or Exxon or other social engines that help us to drive to the apple store to see what they have. If you use common sense you'll make money. I tell you who loses the most money in the stock market.. I go to "open house" once in awhile - not to buy the house -but to look at the buyers - Its strong perfume where the seller is announing the "FAQs" about the house and everyone's circling him. They wear nice clothes, nice shoe and I can see in their face the excitements and the pride they feel being there. They don't have the same feeling when I see them at the grocery store buying potatoes or vegetables. I told this to my old friend who recently bought a house and he says - you know it comes with the dream package of wanting to own something. I thought that was not a very good answer.  By the way, had you bought coh and ESI I mentioned a week or so ago, you'd do well now. Go after "regional" banks. In the stock market you only make money from companies that have customers paying them premium for their service. If you really want to make money in the stock market, you should stop following all the experts and the news channels. Only the companies that can AFFORD to pay for the advertisment of their company are found in the stock market. so even if you buy their stock, you already paid for the advertisment that they paid for to deliver that news to you. Try to save money there by going after companies who did not advertise in the news media. Also, everyone is scared of pink sheets but if you look at it logically, companies go to pink because it is the cheapest way for them to go public and stay public. If you think of yourself as an ethical and honest person and you business is growing and you have more than 60 per cent control in the company, what would you do? You'd want to get the most return in the value of your stock and how would that happen? Well, you'd then not go to Nasdaq or Nyse but go to pink sheet because it saves you money that you would otherwise have to pay for administrative fees or something like those costs. So in the pink areas, there are many companies around the united states that have a hard working shareholder friendly CEO or chairman of the board. And you will be extremely amazed that these companies are "printing money" but quietly. Why because they don't give access to news media and they're fine with the "unpopularity" of their stocks. This is all that I have learned reading quite a lot of Warren Buffett and value investing related books and articles. So, that's my defensive argument. Good luck to all. If anyone's interested - I can create a facebook group where we talk about "obsecure" stocks