What is a good stock to buy when starting out? Should I go for

Whatever you are familiar with and trust. Usually you start out with a company you've been following closely for several years and you think (and maybe analysts agree with you) that their fundamentals deserve a higher price than the market is giving them and that their business model is sustainable for the future.

If you are a complete noob though: None. You don't start out stock-picking. For starters it's very unlikely that you just happen to beat the market with your perfect first-time investment. And holding just a few or even worse, just one title puts you under a lot of pressure. Diversification is king to lower your risk to a sensible amount. Buy an ETF to start out.

>>1795506
But wouldn't it be safe, if Apple for example is low and I get a couple of shares and sit on them til i can make a 200 dollar profit then sell them?

>>1795571
Well, as safe as Apple's future business. It's not like coming up with shitty products or selling a device that will explode in your hands is exactly unheard of.

Look, everything has a risk. Apples is a big company, but a very specific company - it's a US corporation, producing in China, a tech company, highly dependant on design and innovation, etc. If anything goes wrong with any of the aspects listed, they're in trouble.
So holding only 1 company means you have a high exposure to certain risks and in general your volatility will be very high. It can go up 2% in a day, but also down 4%. Holding shares from different companies in different fields decreases your risk exposure, because if anything happens to one of them, it's only a small part of your capital. It also irons out the volatility. One may go down 10% in a day, but the other's go up 2% and still keep you in the positive.

In the end it's of course your fucking money. Do with it whatever you want. If you know Apple and their business environment well enough to predict there will be no troubles ahead and you have further cruched the numbers and press releases to a point where you expect future profits and thus appreciation of the stock - might as well invest. Just be aware that there is no certainty of any of that actually happening. You're literally betting all your money on one horse.

>>1795506
>trusting (((analysts)))

>>1795660
Thanks I'm learning a lot. So a better bet would be to buy one share of multiple companies and wait for whichever stock to increase to sell it, then buy more shares of different companies with potential growth?

>>1795819
I mean, ideally you want to buy low and sell high over and over and over again. In theory that's the way to go.

In practice this doesn't work. You have an information problem: In hindsight it's easy to look at a chart, spot the bottom and the top and say, "Wow, if I had bought here and sold there, I'd have made a *massive* profit!". But in the moment, when you need to make decision, you don't have hindsight. You'd need to have foresight and nobody has a crystal ball.

Since you never know when a stock has hit rock bottom and you never know that a stock has hit its peak, you are likely to make bad decisions, especially as a beginner and even more if you get nervous about your investments. If something goes down 4% in a day, does that mean you should abandon ship? Or is it just a short dip and next week it soars 20%? Does a loss of 40% mean it's cheap and you should buy buy buy, or does it mean next week it loses another 50% because nobody trusts it anymore?

This is not the end-all be-all, but in general for newcomers it is recommended to use a "buy and hold" strategy. Invest in stable companies and hold them long-term. And buy in batches to get a cost-averaging effect since you don't know what the lowest will be. We had a massive crash 2008-2009, but even if you bought 2007 by now you'd be back to having made a nice profit. In the long run the market goes up, but inbetween it might tank and soar a bunch.

ETFs are popular because they are low cost funds that immitate an index (aka a whole market with dozens to hundreds of companies, like the Dow Jones or the S&P 500). So you have low risk, very low volatility and great long-term prospects. Hence why I recommend them for beginners.

>>1795487
Technical trade stocks like aapl. Otherwise do YOUR homework and look for value. Do not listen to stupid "analysts" on here or places like cnbc