- 1). Create a list of stocks you want to follow. Focusing on a handful of stocks will make practicing a lot easier. You can choose companies whose products you buy, stocks in the news, or even the company for which you work.
- 2). Find the ticker symbols of those stocks by using online tools like Yahoo! Finance and CNN Money. Create a spreadsheet listing the names of your chosen stocks and their ticker symbols. Type the current date in the first blank column of your spreadsheet.
- 3). Pick up a financial publication like the Wall Street Journal or Investors Business Daily and look up the current market price of each stock on your list. Enter the price in the first column of your spreadsheet. For practice purposes, you can consider this the price you "paid" for the stock.
- 4). Check the price at periodic intervals and record them on your spreadsheet. You will be able to see your paper loss or gain at a glance by tracking the price of the stock. You can check the share prices of your chosen stocks as often as you like, but keep in mind that stocks are primarily long term investments. It is not unusual to see wild swings in the price of a given stock, even if that stock steadily rises over time.
- 5). Create an online portfolio at financial websites like Yahoo! Finance and CNN Money. Once you enter the ticker symbol of the stock, the site remembers that data and adds it to your portfolio. This can be a good way to add stocks in which you are interested. You can add those new stocks to your spreadsheet later on as well to further track their progress.
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