does anybody know how much you need to play the stock market

You can invest with as little as a couple $100, however with such a small amount of capital I would suggest that you buy index funds that way you are still diversified. Good luck! Looking for any insight go to www.technicalstockcharts.blogspot.com

To safely invest in individual stocks you are going to want to start with at least $10,000. This is because having less than 5 different stocks is not diversified enough to be safe. That leaves you with $2,000/stock to invest. Any less then that and the commissions cost you too much. If you don't have that much, you can still benefit from the market. Put your money in an index fund until you have enough to invest in individual stocks.

Don't be too scared to invest your money in the stock market. Its not as risky as it first seems, especially if you take a long term buy and hold view point. My first investments recently were Telstra (an australian telecom company) and some solar panel manufaturers. They have all risen dramatically and my telstra shares are now worth 75% mroe than i paid for them in only 6 months. Do your research first and invest in education before you spend your cash in the markets. A good free site for information is: http://www.sharedigest.com that site has enough information to get most novice investors up and running, including information on getting a broker account etc. Good luck!

No, I don't work for them! But I just recently opened an account on Scottrade because you can open one with as little as $500 and it's only $7.00 a trade. I don't plan on doing a lot of trading, but there was one stock I wanted to buy. So far I've been very happy with them. I have some other accounts at Fidelity, but decided not to open a brokerage account with them. I can't remember what their minimum was, but it was 19.95 a trade and I didn't want to spend that much. I would suggest researching the companies you want to buy stock in before you actually invest. There are a lot of sites out there where you can do that. I don't know anything about it, so I use Yahoo Finance. I find the symbol, then see what the stock has done for the past few years. What I look for is a steady upward trend over the long term, not short term fluctuations.

Hi : To be, it doesn't matter whether your starting investment capital is US$1,000 or US$100,000, although your capital can stretch longer if the amount is larger. What's important is whether your trading skills & market experiences are able to let you achieve more profitable trades compared to the losing ones - and that skills take time & great effort to acquire. I trade stock options myself and am still learning in this journey each and every day. Yours Truly, Tony Chai a disabled options trader http://options4u.blogspot.com

it depends on the value of your currency, and where you want to invest your money. here in the phils, we actually have a company that issues stocks for Php0.5 and 1 USD now amounts to Php47.

You can start with an amount of 2000 €,but then I advise you then to invest in a tracker,you have then already diversified your investment. (My sister invested about 20 years ago 24000 BEF (600 €) in shares that she still owns now and they are about 14000€ worth on this moment,but this isn't play on the stock market but a long term investment,the dividend she got now of it on a yearly base is about40% of her early investment ). It's much better and safer to invest in the stock market then in HYIP scams.

I can get you started on Sharebuilder.com. If you let me send you a referral you will get 25.00 free. Let me know: gwaring2004@gmail.com