Step 1: The Basic's

A share of stock is the smallest unit of ownership in a company. If you own a share of a company’s stock, you are a part owner of the company. If the company distributes profits to shareholders, you will likely receive a proportionate share.

There are two types of stock:

Common stock
Preferred stock

Most of the stock held by individuals is common stock.

Common Stock
Common stock represents the majority of stock held by the public. It has voting rights, along with the right to share in dividends.

When you hear or read about “stocks” being up or down, it always refers to common stock.

Preferred Stock
Despite its name, preferred stock has fewer rights than common stock, except in one important area – dividends. Companies that issue preferred stocks usually pay consistent dividends and preferred stock has first call on dividends over common stock.

Investors buy preferred stock for its current income from dividends, so look for companies that make big profits to use preferred stock to return some of those profits via dividends.

Step 2: Stock Market Research

The importance of researching stocks before they are purchased can not be stressed enough. Although there is no way to determine without a doubt a stock will go up or down it is still extremely important to do research. Many traders do their research online. The internet has a vast array of information on stocks. This information is found on blogs, finance news sites, stock trading forums as well as numerous other types of sites.

Here are some of the best sites :

Google Finance
• Here you can enter a stock symbol and get the latest news updates and price history for that stock, as well as a forum and the option to save stocks as favorites and track them.

The Motley Fool
• This site has regular stock-blog updates, stock recommendations, stock information and other sound financial advice

Yahoo! Stocks
• Though not as high tech as the others this site still has Company reports, Analyst reports, and company earnings charts.

Step 3: Financial Newspapers

As well as researching online i would recommend, reading financial papers like The Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal , they have in-depth analysis of stocks and can give you a very good overview of the current market and its trends.

Step 4: Buying the Stock

Investing in the stock market is a very simple thing to some. You buy an investment like you buy a product at a shop. Except its a bit more complicated, you cant just hand over cash and get a stock you either have to work for a company or you have to use one to buy the stock, these companies are called stockbrokers.

A stockbroker is the equivalent of a personal shopping assistant. They know your preferences, your likes, your dislikes, your favored asset classes, your risk profile and they make judgments based on that information. A stockbroker has to work with your goals in mind.

Stockbrokers are service providers. They are in business to make you wealthy. Some stockbrokers feel that their business is to buy stocks and helping you make money is just incidental. Whatever a stockbroker says to you, always remember you are the client. It is your money and you make the final decisions.

Step 5: Stock-Growing

Now you have your stock, you wait for it to grow then sell and start the whole process over again, with time you will become more stock-savvy and recognize repeating patterns in the market, your profits will rise and hopeful you wont loose to much in the process :D

Step 6: Wall-street-survivor

If you are a kid and you fancy having a go at this or an adult who want's to practice check out www.wallstreetsurvivor.com
The website has all the real stocks, prices and companies exactly like in real life but you buy them with imaginary money, so you can see what happens without actually spending money.

You start with $100,000 and you can invest it in whatever stock's you want
In my case i wish i had spent real money because i managed to nearly triple (x3) my money, which made me the 14th richest person on the site, quite an achievement seeing as there are 30 thousand members and i'm only 16...

If you do join tell me and ill add you as a buddy :P