How to Find Stock Symbols

Go to an established, reliable stock Web site, such as nasdaq.com or etrade.com.
Click on 'Symbol Look Up.'
Type in the name of the company you want to research. The results will display the company symbol, the type of stock (common or preferred) and the exchange it trades on. Amazon, for example, trades on the Nasdaq as common stock. Its symbol is AMZN.

How to Make Money Investing in Stock

Open a stock trading brokerage account if you do not already have one. You can do this online, over the phone or by mail.
Know your risk tolerance.
You can make money in the stock market with any level of risk aversion. Knowing your comfort level is going to help you sleep at night when you picks the right stocks for you.
If you don't like risk, stick to the Blue Chips.
If you're up for some risk go for the emerging technology penny stocks.
Set goals.
Having specific goals will help you pick the correct stocks for you. Are you investing for retirement, college, a house, etc?
These goals all have different time lines. You wouldn't pick the same stocks to achieve these different goals.For a long term goal like retirement, think large cap dividend stocks like utilities. And then make sure to enroll them in a DRIP.For shorter term goals like a house, you'll want to focus on more risky growth stocks like the technology sector.
Allocate funds.
Whether it a lump sum or a monthly amount, you need money in your brokerage account. This makes the money available to invest the moment you want it.You can set up an automatic electronic transfer if you're going to invest the same amount every month.
Diversify.
Protect yourself from losing your entire investment by diversifying. This is like buying insurance within the stock market. To truly diversify you'll want to invest in at least 5 different industries or sectors.Auto, retail, food, health care, banks, technology, utilities are all examples of different sectors.
Have an exit strategy-- you don't actually make money unless you sell above what you paid.
Knowing when to get out is the most important step to making money in the stock market.
Whether your exit strategy is based on time, like for retirement or college, or based on profit-- like having enough for a house mortgage down payment -- you need a plan.
Take the money and run.
Once you've achieved your goals, take the money and use it for your lifestyle.

How to Track Institutional Stock Trades (5 Steps)

Select a stock you want to pursue and search for it in the stock quote window of almost any search engine or to any brokerage firm website. Enter the stock symbol and when the quote appears, look for and click the 'research' tab. Some sites, like Yahoo Finance, will display the research options automatically on the same page.
Click on 'ownership' or 'holdings.' Under this tab, you'll see the various entities that own the stock. There will be several choices such as 'Insiders' and a few others. One of the headings will be 'Institutions' or 'Institutional.' Here you will find a list of Institutions that own the stock. You'll see how many shares they own and what percentage they hold of the shares outstanding.
Check to see if you're in good company. What are some of the institutions and are they institutions whose judgment you trust? If what you see piques your interest, then take it a step further.
Track institutional activity in the stock. Since institutions don't typically broadcast their trades so as not to tip their hands to the competition, tracking real-time institutional trades is difficult; however, if you check back a couple of times a day, you'll see trades not long after they've taken place. If there's a change, note if it's an increase or decrease in the institution's holdings. Especially important are any instances of institutions selling all their stock, or a new institution investing in it.
Use the information wisely. If after a few weeks or months you notice institutions are increasing their holdings, you know interest is up on the stock. If the number of shares is dropping from institutions, then momentum is slowing and you should try to find out why before investing. Here's hoping you make a bundle!

How to Make Money by Jobbing in the Stock Market

Open a brokerage account that lets you buy and sell stocks and bonds. You can opt to work through a traditional brokerage account, where a broker provides personalized service and advice. The fees for a traditional account often make them prohibitive for the frequent buy-and-sell pattern of stock jobbing. Online brokerage accounts, which provide minimal personalized service and advice, provide the advantage of much lower fees for trading, which lends itself to jobbing.
Understand how a stock chart tracks the past performance of a stock in terms of price. Stock charts typically include graphs that show price movement as jagged lines that cover days, weeks or months of past trading. Some charts represent price movements as vertical bars, called candlesticks, that show the top and bottom prices for a given day.
Understand the support and resistance levels of stocks. Some stocks will persistently fall to a particular price, rise to a particular price and then fall back to the original price. These are the support and resistance levels. The support level, at which the price bottoms out, represents the point at which demand picks up and investors begin to buy. The resistance level, at which the price peaks, represents the point at which demand falls off and investors begin to sell the stock.
Choose an appropriate stock to purchase. Stock selection for jobbing requires you to research the market. The right stocks exhibit ongoing price fluctuations but with relatively predictable support and resistance levels. After you find a stock that shows volatility, but within predictable limits, you wait for the stock to reach its support level and then purchase shares. After the stock reaches its resistance level, you sell the stock shares and pocket the difference. To make stock jobbing profitable, you need to select stocks that demonstrate a large enough difference between support and resistance levels that, when you sell, you make enough to pay the fees and taxes but still make a profit.
Pay your taxes. You are responsible for paying short-term capital gains taxes at your current tax rate for profits on stock jobbing. The Internal Revenue Service may require you to pay estimated tax payments on jobbing profits. Consult with your accountant to determine if or when you need to make payments.

How to Get Started in the Stock Market

Start by doing some basic research into the stock market. Answer long standing questions you may have such as; what is the stock market, or how do you make money in the stock market. You should be working with a solid foundation of knowledge before you attempt to dabble in the market.
Read a financial newspaper such as the 'New York Times' stock section or the 'Wall Street Journal' to learn more about what is happening currently in the market. Stay updated on financial news every day.
Pick five stocks to follow and analyze their trends over the past four or five years. Utilize the Internet as a research to help you track their progress. Create a flow chart with information regarding those particular companies net inflow and outflow and try and distinguish trends amongst the various fluctuations in income production.
Play a virtual stock market game on the computer. Check into various online stock market games as they are a great primer to playing the actual market. Engage in the virtual market for a while before starting on an actual investment opportunities.
Decide what you want to invest in the market for; perhaps you are saving for your future, a house, a new car, or to amass a larger net worth. Determine your risk tolerance and how much fluctuation you can handle without getting nervous to pick on an adequate stock. For beginning investors, mutual funds are usually the safest and least anxiety provoking.
Figure out where you will get the funds to invest in the market and set aside anywhere from $500 at first to buy a few shares of the stock you've chosen. Find a reputable stock broker to help you buy and sell your shares of stocks. With your new knowledge, you might not need a full service broker but for beginners it is often recommended.

How to Calculate Stock Gain

Compute the cost basis for the stock trade. Cost basis consists of the original (purchase) price of the stock plus all fees and commissions paid for the purchase and sale of the stock. For example, if you bought 100 shares of a stock at $10/share ($1,000) and paid fees of $10 when you bought the stock and $12 to sell it, your cost basis is $1,000 plus $10 plus $12 for a total of $1,022.
Calculate the total proceeds. Your total proceeds include the money received from selling the stock plus the cash value of dividends received while you owned the shares. For instance, if you sold the 100 shares from Step 1 for $15/share ($1,500) and received a total of $50 in dividend income during the time you held the shares, your total proceeds are $1,500 plus $50, or $1,550.
Calculate stock gain or loss. Subtract the cost basis from total proceeds. If your cost basis is $1,022 (Step 1) and total proceeds are $1,550 (Step 2) your stock gain is $1,550 minus $1,022, which equals $528. If you get a negative number (meaning the cost basis is greater than total proceeds) you had a loss rather than a gain.
Figure your percentage gain or loss. It’s usually most useful to compare percentage gain or loss to see how well different investments have done. To convert stock gain into percentage stock gain, divide the stock gain by the cost basis and multiply by 100. In the example above, you would divide $528 (stock gain) by $1,022 (cost basis) and multiply the result by 100 to get a percentage stock gain of 51.7 percent.

How to Invest in the Indian Stock Market

Register with a stockbroker or investment firm with ties to the Indian stock market. The defining factor when hiring financial assistance is experience with the market in which you invest your money. Stockbrokers can be costly, but they tend to respond quickly to queries about individual stocks.
Examine the BSE 200 index to determine the strength of your investments in India. This index covers the 200 best-performing businesses in India on a daily basis. Look at individual businesses in your favored industrial sector to assess the wisdom of potential investments.
Go out on a limb with a technology stock through the BSE TECk index. The Indian economy features a rapidly expanding biotechnology and computer-development sector that has been a boon to investors. Past success should be taken with a grain of salt, however, because similar growth in the United States in the 1990s resulted in lost profits for investors.
Locate growing companies with small amounts of capital through the BSE Small-Cap Index. This index features hundreds of young companies with low funding that are looking for investors to take them to the next level. You can invest in a company at a cheap share price without a great deal of risk.
Track the progress of your stocks online with the Bombay Stock Exchange's commitment to quick updates. The BSE index transmits information to local brokers, international websites and business-television networks every 15 seconds.
Spend your investment dollars wisely as you invest in the Bankex index. This index tracks the progress of India's top 12 banks and allows you to make an investment in their growth.