At what point do you have enough money to start investing?

>>1819021
Any amount works for investing. It's just a trickier calculation if you have debt as well.
It's trading that requires much more capital, despite the hordes of LARPers who will soon be posting here, claiming everything from 50% to 2000% returns on stocks, BTC, etc.

>>1819052
So what's the safest way to make positive trades?
Do I need to see a financial professional?

>>1819060
play long term

>>1819060
>positive trades
If you're "investing", you shouldn't be trading at all. Investing works with any amount because it's a hands-off, long term strategy that doesn't require active participation.
Trading, as mentioned, is a completely different activity.

>>1819021
Long term investing? You could start with $500 even. Make sure Robin hood checks out, and start dollar cost averaging into your favorite flavor of S&P 500 fund(recommend VOO), or if you have a hard on for dividends or value or other strategies, learn about funds that do that. Try and minimize your own active interest in the market, because it's wasted effort due to the small amount of principle, on top of you not being special and you're not going to beat the market cupcake.

>>1819095
Never been approved by Robinhood.
Tried 2 separate occasions.

>>1819099
Then if you're interested in a low cost service, try to get into and start with Interactive Brokers. They have extremely low fees but a shitty platform from what I've researched, and may cuck you if you use margin.

Otherwise, if you're going to go with TDAmeritrade, etrade, fidelity, optionhouse or anyone else charging $5 to $10 a trade, check their commission free options, and if they don't appeal to you, try and get positions of at least $500, if not $1000 ($20 round trip fees, means only a 2% loss against gains to work against, and buy and HOLD.)

But read The Investor's Manifesto: Preparing for Prosperity, Armageddon, and Everything in Between or something basic like that while you're getting started. Bogleheads, Stocks for the Long Run, investing 101 books, Quiet Millionaire, Millionaire Next Door.

>>1819095
Why would you VOO when you can SCHB?

>>1819981
There are a dozen different flavors of S&P500 tracking ETF's, and total stock market funds, and 2500 funds, and Russell funds.

VTI I believe would be a better comparison to SCHB.

Here's the thing though, most of these low cost fund families, the Spartan series, every "me too" fund that pushes <.1% expense ratio are doing that via efficiency improvements, and fear of Vanguard. And to compare VTI to SCHB, we're talking .05% expense ratio and .02%. That means if you had 1 million dollars, 1,000,000 invested in each fund, SCHB would charge you $200, and Vanguard $500. It's chump change at that point, a rounding error.

Personally, I would consider transaction costs(if applicable), trust in the company, and the very high bar that is Vanguard's ownership structure.