Where to start with finding good companies to invest?
"There obviously is not such a list of companies, because if there were the whole world would immediately invest in them. Their price would rise like a rocket and they would not be undervalued anymore. Some people think company A should be worth x per share, some people think it should be worth y. If the share price is currently higher than what someone thinks it should be, they sell it, and if it is lower than they think it should be they buy it. The grand effect of this all is that the current market price of the share is more or less the average of what all investors together think it should currently be worth. If you buy a single stock, hoping that it's undervalued and will rise, you may be right but you may equally well be wrong. It's smarter to diversify over lots of stocks to reduce the impact of this risk, it evens out.  There are ""analysts"" who try to make a guess of which stocks will do better, and they give paid advice or you can invest in their funds -- but they invariably do worse than the average of the market as a whole, over the long term. So the best advice for amateurs is to invest in index funds that cover a huge range of companies and try to keep their costs very low."
Nothing beats statistics like that found on Morning Star, Yahoo or Google Finance.  When you are starting out, there is no need to reinvent the wheel.  Pick a couple of mutual funds with good track records and start there.   Keep in mind the financial press, to some degree, has a vested interest in having their readership chase the next hot thing.  So while sites like Seeking Alpha, Kiplingers, or Money do provide some good advice, there is also an element that placates their advertisers.   The only peer-to-peer lending I would consider is Lending Club.  However, you are probably better off in the long run investing in mutual funds.  One way to get involved in individual stocks without getting burned is to participate in Dividend Reinvestment Plans (DRIPs).  Companies that have them tend to be very well established, and they are structured to discourage trading.  Buying is easy, dividend reinvestment is easy, dividend payouts are easy; but, starting and selling  is kind of a pain.  That is a good thing. Start at Investopedia. Get basic clarification on all financial terms and in some cases in detail. But get a book. One recommendation would be Hull. It is a basic book, but quite informative. Likewise you can get loads of material targeted at programmers. Wilmott's Forum is a fine place to find coders as well as finance guys. If you're researching a publicly traded company in the USA, you can search the company filings with the SEC. Clicking 'Filings' should take you here. For the mechanices/terms of stock investing, I recommend Learn to Earn by Peter Lynch. I also like The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John Bogle. It explains why indexing is the best choice for most people. For stock picking, a good intro is The Little Book of Value Investing by Chris Brown. And then there is The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham. IMO, this is the bible of investing. Every listed company needs to maintain book of accounts, when you are investing in companies you would have to look at what is stated in the books and along with other info decide to invest in it. "Everything that I'm saying presumes that you're young, and won't need your money back for 20+ years, and that you're going to invest additional money in the future. Your first investments should never be individual stocks. That is far too risky until you have a LOT more experience in the market. (Once you absolutely can't resist, keep it to under 5% of your total investments. That lets you experiment without damaging your returns too much.) Instead you would want to invest in one or more mutual funds of some sort, which spreads out your investment across MANY companies. With only $50, avoiding a trading commission is paramount. If you were in the US, I would recommend opening a free online brokerage account and then purchasing a no-load commission-free mutual fund. TD Ameritrade, for example, publishes a list of the funds that you can purchase without commission. The lists generally include the type of fund (index, growth, value, etc.) and its record of return. I don't know if Europe has the same kind of discount brokerages / mutual funds the US has, but I'd be a little surprised if it didn't. You may or may not be able to invest until you first scrape together a $500 minimum, but the brokerages often have special programs/accounts for people just starting out. It should be possible to ask. One more thing on picking a fund: most charge about a 1% annual expense ratio. (That means that a $100 investment that had a 100% gain after one year would net you $198 instead of $200, because 1% of the value of your asset ($200) is $2. The math is much more complicated, and depends on the value of your investment at every given point during the year, but that's the basic idea.) HOWEVER, there are index funds that track ""the market"" automatically, and they can have MUCH lower expense fees (0.05%, vs 1%) for the same quality of performance. Over 40 years, the expense ratio can have a surprisingly large impact on your net return, even 20% or more! You'll want to google separately about the right way to pick a low-expense index fund. Your online brokerage may also be able to help. Finally, ask friends or family what mutual funds they've invested in, how they chose those funds, and what their experience has been. The point is not to have them tell you what to do, but for you to learn from the mistakes and successes of other experienced investors with whom you can follow up." "If you don't want to do the deep research on each individual company, you might want to look at index funds and similar ""whole market"" investments." Research the company. Obtain and read their current and past financial statements. Find and read news stories about them. Look for patterns and draw conclusions. Or diversify to the point where one company failing doesn't hurt you significantly. Or both. So, first -- good job on making a thorough checklist of things to look into. And onto your questions -- is this a worthwhile process? Even independent of specific investing goals, learning how to research is valuable. If you decided to forgo investing in stocks directly, and chose to only invest in index funds, the same type of research skills would be useful. (Not to mention that such discipline would come in handy in other fields as well.) What other 80/20 'low hanging fruit' knowledge have I missed? While it may not count as 'low hanging fruit', one thing that stands out to me is there's no mention of what competition a company has in its field. For example, a company may be doing well today, but you may see signs that it's consistently losing ground to its competition. While that alone may not dissuade you from investing, it may give you something to consider.  Is what I've got so far any good? or am I totally missing the point. Your cheat sheet seems pretty good to me. But a lot depends on what your goals are. If you're doing this solely for your education and experience, I would say you've done well. If you're looking to invest in a company that is involved in a field you're passionate about, you're on the right track. But you should probably consider expanding your cheat sheet to include things that are not 'low hanging fruit' but still matter to you.  However, I'd echo the comments that have already been made and suggest that if this is for retirement investments, take the skills you've developed in creating your cheat sheet and apply that work towards finding a set of index funds that meet your criteria.  Otherwise happy hunting! The most significant capability that an investor must have is the knowledge on the way to look for the high dividend stocks. Through accumulating good information relating to towards the stocks that you are finding is the better way of getting the perfect and profitable investments. It is really important to learn what makes a particular stock better and superior compared to other.   Traders are essential to start a complete analysis and investigation before getting their money on any business projects. Obviously, investors certainly want to have an investment that could guarantee an effective expense for a very reasonable cost the moment of getting it. The chances of crucial to invest in a market that you might be aware and qualified about. So, creating a comparison and compare in one business to a different is totally essential so as to find the high dividend stock. When you start to buy stock, don't buy too little of it! Stocks come at a cost (you pay a commission), and you need to maintain a deposit, you have to take these costs into account when buying to calculate your break even point for selling. Don't buy stock for less than 1.500€ Also, diversify. Buy stock from different sectors and from different geographies. Spread your risks. Start buying 'defensive' stocks (food, pharma, energy), then move to more dynamic sectors (telecom, informatics), lastly buy stock from risky sectors that are not mature markets (Internet businesses). Lastly, look for high dividend. That's always nice at the end of the year. "First thing I'd say is don't start with investing. The foundation of solid finances is cash flow. Making more than you spend, reliably; knowing where your money goes; having a system that works for you to make sure you make more than you spend. Until you have that, your focus may as well be on getting there, because you can't fix much else about your finances until you fix this. A number you want to know is your percentage of income saved, and a good goal for that is about 15%, with 10-12% going to retirement savings and the rest to shorter-term goals and emergency fund and so forth. (Of course the right percentage here depends on your goals and situation, but for most people this is a kind of minimum savings rate to be in good shape.) Focus on your savings rate. This is your profitability, if you view yourself as a business. If it's crappy or negative, your finances will be a mess. Two ways to improve it are to spend less or to improve your earnings power. Doing both is even better. The book Your Money or Your Life by Dominguez and Robin is good for showing how to obsessively focus on cash flow, even though you may not share their zeal for early retirement. A simpler exercise than what they recommend: take 3 months of your checking and credit card statements, go through each expenditure and put them in a spreadsheet column, SUM() that column. Then add up 3 months of after-tax paychecks. Divide both numbers by three and compare. (The 3 months is to average out your spending, which probably varies a lot by month.) After positive cash flow and savings rate, the next thing I'd go through is insurance. Risk management for what you have. This can include checking you have all the important insurance coverages (homeowner's/renter's, auto, potentially umbrella, term life, disability, and of course health insurance, are some highlights); and also adjusting all your policies to be most cost-effective, which usually means raising the deductible if you have a good emergency fund. Often you can raise the deductible on policies you have, and use the savings to add more catastrophe coverage (such as term life if you didn't have it, or boosting the liability protection on your homeowner's, or whatever). Remember, cover catastrophes as cheaply and comprehensively as possible, but don't worry about reimbursement for non-catastrophic expenses. I like this book, Smart and Simple Financial Strategies for Busy People by Jane Bryant Quinn, because it covers all the main personal finance topics, not just investing; and because it is smart and simple. All the main stuff to think about is in the one book and the advice is solid and uncomplicated. Investing can truly be dead easy; most people would be fine with this advice: Honestly, I do micro-optimize and undermine my investing, and I'm guessing most people on this forum do. But it's not something I could defend objectively as a good use of time. It probably is necessary to do some reading to feel financially literate and confident in an investment plan, but the reading isn't really because a good plan is complicated, it's more to understand all the complicated things that you don't need to do, since that's how you'll know not to do them. ;-) Especially when salespeople and publications and TV are telling you over and over and over that you need to know a bunch of crap and do a bunch of things. People who have a profitable ""business of me"" are the ones who end up with a lot of money. Not people who spend a lot of time screwing with investments. (People who get rich investing invest professionally - as their ""business of me"" - they don't goof around with their 401k after work.) Financial security is all about your savings rate, i.e. your personal profitability. No shortcuts, other than lotteries and rich uncles." "There isn't really a clear way to answer this question objectively.  I'd offer my opinion that yes it is a good idea. You don't need very much money to start (I began investing on $200). To answer your second question, no there are never any ""sure things.""  Instead on focusing on making money, focus on learning how the markets work. Pick a few companies you know (perhaps in an industry you are familiar with) and buy one or two shares at a time. Watch the prices evolve over time and make note of the changes and always ask the question ""why did it go up/down"". Good luck." You can go to the required company's website and check out their investor section. Here is an example from GE and Apple. "If you can afford the time and are looking for more deep, and fun, investment tips, check out http://gurufocus.com. Great for more fundamental analysis of ""Intelligent Investor"" type Benjamin Graham-style businesses.  No use scatter-shooting the stock exchange hoping to find good value businesses. Even blue-chips have an increasingly uncertain future (except IMHO certain world dominators like KO, WMT, XO and MCD)."