Many people want to “feel” good inside that they are doing the right thing and only investing their money in stocks of companies that are participating in this green movement. But there are many levels of participation so where do you draw the line.

You can look into how to buy stocks of companies that are directly inventing or perfecting technologies that will lead our world into a cleaner era. These would be companies that deal in wind power, sun power, electric cars, and any other newish technology that will be a benefit to generations to come. It seems that some of these stocks may be end up being big home runs and others might fail miserably.

Another option you have is buying stocks of companies that are changing things internally within their structure to save money and not waste as much as they once did. Adopting recycling programs and other measures to help the environment are a big trend in many organizations today.

Buying stocks of companies in the first group is easier to do and understand than the second group. New industries are easy to identify and you can then pick stocks of companies in that group. How though, do you figure out what your best bets are for investing in the second group? So many companies today will tell you that they are changing their ways that it is surely hard to determine who is really doing the best job.

It is great to want to save the environment but basing your investment decisions purely on what your heart is telling you may not be the best choice. Your small investment dollar is probably not going to make a lick of difference in the big scheme of things no matter who you invest in. My choice would be to pick the companies I feel will do the best no matter what they do or what business they are in.

There is no doubt that money can be made by investing in green stocks. However you are limiting your choices if that is the only group you have to choose from. It seems you might do more good by making sure that you change your ways around your house and do your best with saving gas, electricity, water, and adopt recycling.

A mutual fund is a basket of stocks that all fit under some criterion. You might buy a mutual fund that specializes in a specific industry, in growth stocks, in dividend stocks, or in something else. You can find mutual funds for pretty much any industry or investing philosophy you might want nowadays as mutual funds have become very popular.

Mutual funds have taken off in popularity in the last 25 years because you get the professional money management of the fund manager. He or she is supposedly an expert in the field of the fund and thus properly positioned to make good investment choices. The fund manager buys and sells stocks of different companies and all those companies together make up the fund. It is the manager’s sole responsibility to choose what stocks to buy and when to buy or sell them. When you invest your money into a stock fund, you are really putting a lot of your trust in the fund manager.

The reason many people recommend stock funds to average investors is the belief that everyday working people don’t have the time required to keep up with and do the proper research needed for buying individual stocks on their own. People have busy lives and most just don’t have the knowledge or enough free time to do ample research. Why not put your money in a fund and have a qualified profession do it all for you? That is the reasoning.

The drawback of stock mutual funds are the fees you pay for them. Nothing in life is free and the way stock fund managers make their money is to charge all the fund members a fee. You are paying the fund manager to manage the fund (your money) and make decisions that you hope will be good ones. These fees are most often more than you would pay to buy and sell the individual stocks online yourself.

You might be still learning how to buy stocks online and wondering whether you should go your own way or instead invest your money in a fund that looks appealing to you. One thing you might consider is that now there are so many different stock funds available that it may be just as hard to choose a fund as it is to choose individual stocks. There are thousands of mutual funds to pick from as there are thousands of stocks. How can you intelligently pick a fund when you really have no idea how to rate it without doing your own research that you might be trying to avoid in the first place?

The one good thing about stock funds is that once you do decide which one(s) to go with, you don’t have to pay as much attention to them as you should with individual stocks. You need to monitor individual stocks often to keep up with current events and make sure your stocks are still positioned correctly. This is the same service you would be paying the fee for if your money were in a fund.

So, it boils down to how much time you want to invest and whether you are willing to pay to have someone manage your stock picks for you. Only you can decide whether you are confident enough in your own stock choices or would rather pay someone to make those choices for you.

A great place to get a definition for these terms is here at Wall Street Survivor Glossary. You can find easy to understand explanations for many of the terms you might be wondering about.

Wall Street Survivor is a great place for any beginner to learn how to trade stocks online and it is 100% free to sign up for. It is an online stock simulation game and learning center where you can have fun while you learn and they even award monthly prizes. You are given $100,000 in virtual money when you start out and it is yours to invest as you please. Anything you can do with real stocks and real online investing you can do at Wall Street Survivor and it is a great place to get your feet wet before you jump into buying stocks for real.

All the different stock market terms can be quite confusing to anyone just starting out and that is especially evident when you watch one of the business shows on television. They often have panels of stock picking experts on those shows and they throw around the fancy stock terminology all the time. In order to understand what they are talking about you really need to understand a word or two. Once you do, you will have gotten over one of the intimidating aspects of stock market investing and can concentrate on picking your first stocks to buy.

Some people’s only exposure to the stock market is through their 401K’s. Most companies have done away with pension plans and now offer a 401K plan where you can put up to 10% of your pay before taxes in and the company will often match a small portion of it. Over the years, this can grow to be quite a large amount and it is, along with Social Security, what most Americans are relying on for their retirement years.

At all times, you can designate how and where you want the money in your 401K plan invested but often times the options are quite limited. Most plans will give you a handful of options that range from conservative to aggressive and these are in the form of mutual funds. When you put money in a mutual fund it is probably one that invests in stocks so you are really investing in the stock market but not as directly as you would be if you bought one stock at a time.

Most 401K programs do not allow you to buy individual stocks and only allow you to put money in the mutual funds they are associated with. Sometimes, if the company you work for is on the stock exchange, you can invest as much as you want in your own companies stock but only that stock. Any other stock investment has to be put into one or more of the mutual funds.

The older you get, the less money you should have in stocks or mutual funds. This is a basic rule of investing that too many people don’t follow. That is why with the market crises of a couple years ago, so many older people lost much of their retirement money. Although they might not have owned individual stocks, they had all their money in mutual funds in their 401K’s which is the exact same thing as owning the stocks. When the market goes down, so does the mutual funds.

As you get closer to retirement, you should be sure to move your 401K money out of the aggressive stock funds and into the more conservative ones or a savings account option if it is offered. Older people have a much shorter investing time horizon as they might need the money at any time. Having most or all of their money in stocks, whether it is in mutual funds or individual stocks, is foolhardy when you think about the risk.

If your 401K does allow the buying and selling of any stock on the major exchanges, it is one of the rare plans that allows such a thing. You should be sure to not get caught up in doing too much excessive trading and remember that you are using real money that is yours. It is easy to get the feeling that you are using play money and forget that all of it came out of your paycheck. Although you may not have access to the money right now (without penalty), you will need it later in your life so you should treat it with respect and invest it as intelligently as possible.

If you want to buy gold as an insurance policy against this uncertainty, should you be buying gold stocks or should you be buying the real thing: gold bars and coins? Are gold stocks the best stocks to buy right now in 2010?

For years, it was thought that buying stocks of gold mining companies was almost the same as buying the gold itself. As the value of gold rises, often the value of these gold mining companies (like Kinross Gold) goes right up as well. After all, they are in the business of finding something that is getting more and more valuable so the value of the company must go up too.

However, if things get really bad with the economy, doesen’t that affect the ability of these gold mining companies to do business? It impacts their hiring, borrowing, purchasing, and every aspect of their business if the economy totally collapses. So, even though they are in the business of gold that might be doing well, their ability to do business is of major importance.

It seems that owning a gold stock in these tough times is more risky than owning real gold instead. I may be wrong but in really bad times, I want to have something in my hands that I can tough and feel rather than a piece of paper that says I own a stock.

Owning gold bars or coins can be very cumbersome, especially if you own a lot. Most people keep them in safe deposit boxes or a safe in their house. Others have been known to even bury the gold somewhere on their property. Dealing with the physical problems of keeping gold safe from theives has been the thing that has always deterred me from owning the bars or coins. I have opted for owning gold stocks and done well enough with them so far.

But now that the economy is really in shambles and showing no signs of turning around, it makes me wonder whether owning real gold might be the way to go. Rather than bothering with how to buy stocks online, maybe I should be concentrating on how to buy gold online. What is your opinion?

2010 though, could be a much different year for stocks and it is already starting out like that. In 2009, we had a brand new President who preached hope and people were enthusiastic and upbeat about a change for the better. The market no doubt was helped along somewhat from this positive energy as people were willing to buy back into it in hopes that the economy would start to turn around.

Now though, after one full year and an economy that just keeps getting worse, people’s perceptions of the future aren’t nearly as rosy. The Obama stimulus isn’t working and there is growing disatisfaction coming from all parts of America as well as from both liberals and conservatives. Unemployment continues to hover around 10% and companies like Toyota are in trouble for the first time in recent memory. All in all, things look extremely dicey at the moment and the stock market is showing it. 

The Dow has now dipped below 10,000 for the first time in months and investors look like they are increasingly weary of the future that seems so uncertain. If you are looking  for the best stocks to buy right now, you might keep in mind that there is nothing stopping the market from going right back down to 7,000 or even lower than where it was before it made it’s big comeback.  

Investors seem to forget the past too quickly and sometimes get swept up in the euphoria of a rising market. Having the Dow rise well above 10,000 has made stock buyers forget how bad things were just one year ago. 2010 could very well be another really bad year as the Obama administration flounders with solutions and continues to spend money like they were printing it themselves (too bad they are).

High inflation, low interest rates, high unemployment, and a further deterioration of the economy could be what we have in store for this next year and beyond. It is my opinion that anyone thinking of buying stocks should be cautious and not spend all their money at once. Of course this could be a buying opportunity but it just doesn’t feel that way to me. It feels like some more difficult times for stocks might be right around the corner so I am hanging on to my cash for now.

This is because the stock market is really based on people’s perceptions of the future and what they think is going to happen. During earnings season, all the analysts and major brokerage houses do their own analysis and make predictions on what they think companies are going to announce for their earnings. Often times these predictions and general sentiment toward a stock are enough to move them significantly.

If the predictions are all close to being correct, the stock price of a company has already moved to where it should be by the time the company announces earnings. There is little movement afterwards because there was no surprise in how well the company did. Of course if the earnings are way better or worse than what people thought they would be, the stock price does go up or down after earning as well.

After earnings are announced, one thing that always seems to affect a stock price’s movement is the forward looking comments that might be made by a company that go along with the earnings. For example, company XYZ might have had tremendous earnings that blew away all estimates for this quarter but if they announce that they see trouble ahead, the stock price will often go down instead of up as you might have thought. The forward looking comments are actually more influential in moving the stock price than the current earnings.

If you are buying stocks for the first time, this may be one of the things that takes time to get used to. Finding a company that has a bright future ahead of it will often make you more money than finding one that is doing well right now. This is never more evident than when you look at companies that are brand new and have no earnings and yet the stock price keeps going up. It seems to defy logic that a new company that is yet unproven can have a stock price that soars but the reason that happens is because people want to be part of what they think is a company that will do well in the future. The perception of good things to come and not wanting to be left behind often drives the stock up more than it should.

Before the Internet, it was harder for everyday investors to buy and sell individual stocks and many people opted to buy into funds that were managed by professionals. Most people have real jobs and little time to study the market and make informed decisions about what stocks they should have in their portfolio. It was easier to just pick a fund and leave all the hard work up to the fund manager. The thinking might have been that you should be able to make more with a good fund manager: after all, that was his sole job to make the fund go up.

Now the Internet is here and every person in the world can easily do their own stock picking and trading with ease for a very minimal price. It has brought people into the market that might not have been interested in it years before when you had to do everything through a broker.

2009 was a great year for stocks and it came after two really bad years in 2008 and 2007. Many people made great money in 2009 or at least made back some of what they lost the two years before that. But has the terrible bear market of  2008 been totally forgotten or is it still in the back of people’s mind that it could happen again?

If you are looking into buying stocks for the first time in 2010, you should make sure you understand the risk involved. You might only know that the market was great last year and want to be getting in now to get a piece of any further upswing that might take place this year. However, I am sure that very few investors have really forgotten just how bad it can get and how much money can be lost when the market goes down as in 2008.

Many investors are still gun shy and with the economy still being very poor, there is absolutely no way of knowing what may happen this year. When bad news comes out, investors sell and sell fast, especially with 2008 still clear in their minds. If the economy continues to stagnate and jobs continue to be lost, investors may panic and overreact to any bad news and start another big selloff.

The market climbed steadily in 2009 and stalled here around 10,500 where it has been for some time. It seems it is waiting either for good news or bad news to determine where it goes next. With Obama in control and the government out of control with spending, there might be a lot more bad news this year than good news. So, if you are looking for the best stocks to buy right now here in 2010, be careful and don’t invest what you can’t lose. There are no guarantees in this stock market!

One of the options with WallStreet Survivor is to short stocks with your money and I have a screen print below of the three trades I have going in my portfolio:
 
 

My first two selections are regular buys and for each one of those I have a gain so far. My third pick is where I have shorted 100 shares of Apple at $198.97 and as of today I have lost money because the stock has gone up. If the stock were to continue going up, there is no limit to what I could lose, theoretically.

Shorting stocks online is not something any beginner should do because it is much more risky than just buying a stock. When you buy a stock, all you can lose is everything you have invested but with shorting, there is no limit to your potential loses if things go bad.

In order to short a stock, you need to first borrow it from your broker. You get the money for it and at a later date, you will need to buy it back in order to give the stock back to your broker. For instance, if I had really shorted AAPL at $198.97, I would have gotten $19,897 for it (minus fees). Right now though, if I wanted to get out (cover my position) I would have to pay over $21,000 for the same hundred shares for a loss of over thirteen hundred dollars.

The stock can continue to rise and if it did, I would have to pay more and more to buy my hundred shares back which I will need to repay my broker with. That is why storting stocks is so dangerous: there is no ceiling to what you can lose. Actually there is and it will be the limit your broker imposes on you with the type of assets you have in your account. Your broker will not just let you lose more and more money that you don’t have and so at some point, your broker will force you to cover so that he can get his money back. At that point, you will have lost much of what you have and you will have no further position in the short.

If you want to see what it is like to short a stock without the real risk, Wall Street Survivor is a great place to test the waters. You can get all sorts of great information there with your own free virtual money portfolio and trade online just like you would with real money at a real broker website. They even have an expert stock picking section if you are interested in reading opinions of the best stocks to buy right now in 2010. It is often not wise to short stocks but if you want to find out what it’s like to do it, now you know where to go!

You hear lots of predictions, recommendations, and guesses by listening to the business radio and TV shows. One thing I hate about those shows is there is no way to know what an experts track record is when they are making the stock pick. Most shows have a rotating panel of these so called “experts” and different ones are on from week to week and unless you keep track with paper and pencil, you have no way of knowing who is doing well and who’s stock picks are bad.

Jim Cramer from the Street.com (and Mad Money on CNBC and his own radio talk show) has started his Action Alerts Plus service where you can see his personal portfolio and every trade he makes. He will send you an email before he makes all trades and explain to you why he is making them. You will be able to see all his recommedations and learn what he is doing as he is doing it.

The Action Alerts Plus service has a 14 day free trial to see if you like it and after that there is your choice of a monthly or yearly subscription fee. If you are truly looking for the best stocks to buy right now at any moment, this is one way to know what one industry expert is doing with his own money. Whether you are buying stocks for the first time or you are a seasoned investor, keeping track of what Jim Cramer does with his own personal money can only be a good strategy.