One of the first things you need to ask yourself is whether trading or investing for that matter is for you. There are various ways one gains exposure to the stock market other than a do it yourself approach. However all requires some form of upfront cost to manage your account, and in most instance the results are hardly better than when you do it yourself.

Thus, if you have worked out your financial goals, I have assumed you have done so. Your next task will be to find out how to go about achieving your goals. For those who may have had but a cursory observation of the stock market, the fact is that the stock market and other financial markets are a potential source of achieving these goals. Stories of average people using the stock market for growing wealth or making an income are bound. Nonetheless an acceptance to invest or speculate in the stock market comes with strings attached, one of them being the potential for loss, and the risk of not attaining your goals are real.

Hence, care must be taken in deciding if you are able to trade or invest for a living. The main aspect of stock investing/trading one need to realise is that successful trading and investment is mainly based on psychology, which is underpinned by having the right temperament. Without the right temperament, you cannot succeed in the stock market. Hence, an understanding of your psychology is paramount. If you are prone to panic, and not good under pressure, then venturing into stock trading or Forex trading may not be for you. There is nothing wrong with this, the sooner you are able to arrive at this conclusion the less expensive the experiment of stock trading becomes and the quicker you are able to move on to other areas of interest suitable to your temperament.

However if you have a nerve of steel, willing to work hard, have a never give up mentality, the ability to stay focus, and the wiliness to learn, then you have some of the traits required to become successful at stock trading or investing. Hence being honest with oneself is of utmost importance, before venturing into stock trading.

Once you have gone through the initial self-reflective phase and you believe stock trading or investing is for you, your next question may be this:-"what is one to do, to begin trading and investing"?

Like any other profession or business, you will need to acquire knowledge, which comes in the form of acquiring information that covers the intellectual underpinning of the stock market. One can get this through the study of stock trading and investing books, coupled with the leveraging of the experiences of other successful participants of the stock market. Some of the stock trading books that would be most beneficial in the library of any serious stock and Forex trader are listed as follows:

Reminiscence of a stock operator

Market Wizards

New Market Wizards

Random Walk On Wall street

How I Made 2 Million In The Stock Market

These books capture sound advice and experiences of traders of the stock, commodity and Forex market. However, one would be mistaken to expect to get a trading strategy or a "how to" approach to the stock, Forex or any other financial market from books. What there are, are more or less what you would expect to see in books about a profession or business, not an instructive guide on how to trade or invest, but one that covers various experiences and provides some sort of theoretical understanding from which to build on.

In order to get an instructive guide on how to approach the stock market, you can approach this in two ways.

You can start trading and investing, and develop your strategy or approach, through your own experiences and research, what I call a self-taught approach, and some have being known to do this successfully. You acquire experience through learning from your mistakes in trading and investing in the stock market, and you then get better with time. Nonetheless, there are no guarantees of your achieving success with this approach, however as stated previously some have done so successfully.

The other approach is to purchase a training program that provides the ground work for allowing you to develop an approach to stock investing or trading. Again others have done this successfully while others have failed at it. However a good training program, should provide instructive approach to the stock market, and should allow you use the knowledge acquired to be successful overtime. Be careful with software systems or programs that make unrealistic promises. In this business it is better to know what you are doing, so unless these system are able to show and explain how there make money from the stock market, there are best avoided.

Order than the points raised so far, if you have made a decision to give trading and investing a go, because of the advantages of not reporting to anyone and that includes no customers, and the potential for earning an income, then taking concrete actions is a most. Set yourself a plan that covers how your goals are to be achieved through stock investing and trading. I have found one of the biggest route to failure apart from people doing the wrong things in the stock market, is Inaction and procrastination. However temper this with an understanding of risk and get proper training in any of the forms previously allude to, to minimise risk.