If the bear market of 2008 taught me anything, it was that investors like you and me are not getting the advice we are paying for.
The fact is that it is easy to make money in stocks when the market is going up and just as easy to lose it when it is going down.
That's why the first thing you need to do before you invest any of your money is determine if that market is going up or down.
It's probably about half of the equation in whether you will make any money in the stocks you pick.
And that's why you can do just as well as your broker picking stocks if you study what the overall market is doing.
OK.
So where do you look.
The market has some overall statistics called indexes that you can watch.
There are three major indexes to examine.
They are:

1. S& 500
2. Nasdaq composite
3. Dow Jones Industrial Average

Each day you should watch these averages closely.
Are they trending upward or downward.
Get an overall feel for where the market is headed.
It's not good enough to look at the closing stats for the day though.
What you need to do is actually look at a chart of the index that includes at least the price and volume action of that index over a long period of time.
It's also best to look at two specific types of charts.
One that summarizes the index activity on a daily basis and one that summarizes it on a weekly basis.
This is the first step to learning to make money in common stocks.