Open an account on thinkOrSwim (etrade, whoever), fund it, trade with small amounts of money and research everything as you go.
Arbitrarily, SLV, which is an ETF that tracks silver futures. If you want to play with fire (and learn a lot of cool stuff), trade options (that's what I used to do)
Websites: SeekingAlpha (side note: financial articles, SA included, are sophisticated-sounding babble put out by someone that has to meet their quota, not well-thought-out logical explanations by people in-the-know)
Make a list of terminology and learn directly what it means to your trading. Pretty much any trading term that has general meaning and isn't arcane and quant-y is googleable. I recall Khan Academy also having very useful videos explaining a lot of terminology (Salman Khan used to be a trader)
For example, in SLV:
Liquidity: How easy (read: cheap) it is to open and close a position. If the spread on an option is $33.00 (sell) and $33.33 (buy), you lose 1% (most people say $0.33 - I prefer to look at the percentages) just by getting in and out of a position regardless of your trade (I'm ignoring commissions), and assuming the trade reliably goes through instantly. The higher the cost (time, risk of nonfulfillment, money) of opening and closing a position, the more illiquid the position is.
In the context of houses, the time and effort and money put into maintenance and time and uncertainty involved in buying/selling, etc make them extremely illiquid investments. If you own AAPL stock and it crashes, you can hit a button and sell it. If you own a house and the housing market collapses, good luck!
If I were to invest the cost of a house in some high-volume stock with a tight bid-ask ratio and sell it two years later for the same price by hitting a button on my phone, my losses are just the bid-ask difference and I was never really at much risk of being unable to sell it instantly (during market hours at least). It's a very liquid position.
That's just one example, but there are plenty out there. Jump in feet first, google all the things, and don't wager stupid amounts of money.
Arbitrarily, SLV, which is an ETF that tracks silver futures. If you want to play with fire (and learn a lot of cool stuff), trade options (that's what I used to do)
Websites: SeekingAlpha (side note: financial articles, SA included, are sophisticated-sounding babble put out by someone that has to meet their quota, not well-thought-out logical explanations by people in-the-know)
Make a list of terminology and learn directly what it means to your trading. Pretty much any trading term that has general meaning and isn't arcane and quant-y is googleable. I recall Khan Academy also having very useful videos explaining a lot of terminology (Salman Khan used to be a trader)
For example, in SLV: Liquidity: How easy (read: cheap) it is to open and close a position. If the spread on an option is $33.00 (sell) and $33.33 (buy), you lose 1% (most people say $0.33 - I prefer to look at the percentages) just by getting in and out of a position regardless of your trade (I'm ignoring commissions), and assuming the trade reliably goes through instantly. The higher the cost (time, risk of nonfulfillment, money) of opening and closing a position, the more illiquid the position is.
In the context of houses, the time and effort and money put into maintenance and time and uncertainty involved in buying/selling, etc make them extremely illiquid investments. If you own AAPL stock and it crashes, you can hit a button and sell it. If you own a house and the housing market collapses, good luck!
If I were to invest the cost of a house in some high-volume stock with a tight bid-ask ratio and sell it two years later for the same price by hitting a button on my phone, my losses are just the bid-ask difference and I was never really at much risk of being unable to sell it instantly (during market hours at least). It's a very liquid position.
That's just one example, but there are plenty out there. Jump in feet first, google all the things, and don't wager stupid amounts of money.