Everything is now working in favor of individual investors to learn about stocks and trade them. The Internet has opened up a new world to everyone. 

Online trading has changed the average investors' involvement in trading their own stocks. The availability of company information has become so widespread and easily attainable that researching and finding stocks to buy and sell is as easy as logging onto your computer. 

Buying a stock for the long term means that you want to own part of a company and you think that in the future the company will be profitable. If you buy stock in a company and the company performs well, the stock's price should rise. If the company fails, then the stock should fail you, too and go down. 

Companies list their stocks on the various stock exchanges located throughout the U.S. The stock exchanges actually compete with each other for these listings, since companies that attract more trading make more money for the stock exchange that listed it. 

Company stocks are assigned a "ticker", or trading symbol by the listing exchange. You may notice some well-chosen tickers that are easy to remember, like "DNA" for the company Genentech, a biotechnology firm. Or some companies' ticker is the same as its name, Nike for example. 

You need to know the ticker of a stock in order to access information about the stock and eventually trade it. 

The various stock exchanges are a very good place to start getting information on stock trading and general investing. We suggest you visit the following web sites:

• The American Stock Exchange (www.amex.com)
• The Nasdaq Stock Market (www.nasdaq.com)
• The New York Stock Exchange (www.nyse.com)
• The Pacific Exchange (www.pacificex.com)
• The Philadelphia Exchange (www.phlx.com)

Besides being a great online source, some of the exchanges listed above give free seminars about investing.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, which is the watch dog and regulator of the securities industry, also has an investor education program and you can get more information at it's web site at www.sec.gov/oiea1.htm.