It’s funny to me when I think back to the first day I opened an account with Ameritrade and bought my first shares of stock. I knew so little about investing, the stock market, and economics at the time. But I couldn’t care less; I was so enthralled by my fascination for the stock market that I ignored all rationale and dove head first into the stock market like a man into a sea of hungry great white sharks. This is the pathetically humorous story of my introduction to the stock market.

How it started…

It started in late 2005 when during a conversation with my girlfriend she mentioned that she owned some shares of Coca-Cola. I remember thinking it was interesting, but didn’t give it much thought and our conversation quickly turned to other subjects (because I’m a random topics kinda guy). After a short period of time though I began thinking about the stock market and it reminded me of an online video game I used to play that had an economy in it. And of course when I played that game I was incredibly diligent at having the best items and most gold, so I quickly learned the ins and outs of that video game’s economy. So with this in mind, I thought it would be amazing to see what it would be like if I applied that passion to the real economy and stock market.

So I went to the Ameritrade’s website and opened up a brokerage account with them and funded it with the bare minimum. I remember thinking how overwhelming everything was. I was switching between tabs and asking things like “What is a market order?”, “What is volume?”, “What should I buy?” as if I had any idea what I was doing. I played around with the web site for about fifteen minutes and somehow concluded that I was ready to buy my first shares.

Want a free a song? My first shares…

I chose the incredibly successful company known as Napster for my first stock purchase. I really can’t remember why I chose Napster; I never used their paid service, and never thought it was anything worthwhile. Nonetheless I felt like a proud owner, joking with my friends that “I own 0.000017% of Napster, want a free song?”. Of course I didn’t even own that small percentage, because I was doing my calculation based on the daily volume instead of the stock’s market capitalization (not understanding the difference).

I had bought about $800 worth of stock, and became incredibly excited when I saw the share price rise a few cents. I didn’t understand the concept of percentages and was only concerned with the immediate dollar value changes. I eventually went on to sell the stock for a gain of nine dollars.

The bottom line…

I can’t believe how naive I once was and how ridiculous my thought process used to be when it came to deciding what companies to invest in. I would sit and think “Which company will come out with the next iPod?” and then go out and invest in stocks like Nike for no real arguable reason. But I can’t say I regret this since it all got me started on my path to investing properly and investing successfully.

You can take some lessons from this story of my start into the stock market if you are a non-investor thinking about getting into it. If you want to dive head first into investing, trading, and the stock market, just remember there is an incredible amount of ideas, concepts, and terminology that you need to learn. In my story alone I didn’t understand

• Volume
• Order types
• Market Capitalization
• Percentages over Dollar values

And that’s all while not investing without any sort of plan or strategy. If I had to do it all again, I would’ve read all those stock market books before I started buying stock, not while I was already buying stock. The only good part of all of this is that I invested with a very small amount of money that I could afford to lose. So even if I lost every cent I wouldn’t be living out on the streets, and would atleast have gotten an education if I failed.

How did you get started?

How did you start out investing or trading in the stock market and what inspired you? I’d love to hear from everyone what got them started and what rookie mistakes they made. Don’t be shy, leave a comment and tell us your story! It can’t be any worse than me buying shares of Napster (I was being sarcastic earlier about it being an incredibly successful company if you didn’t notice).