Easy to use and $7 trades. This is partially because I usually buy stocks in $1000 increments rather than larger blocks. Another stragety I use is to cut my losses and sale the stock of it drops below 8 percent.....I have found in many of those cases I guessed the trend wrong and the stock will fall at least another 10 percent. Cut your losses before they get more than 10 percent.

Also dividend stocks can provide another nice flow of cash, certainly better than a cd rate. I actually need to follow this advice more often and buy more dividend stocks.

Also never buy a stock with recent insider saling. If the higher-ups in the company do not want to stock, why should you? Often times this can signal red flags with the underlying business.

On the other hand, stock repurchase can be a good sign that the stock is in good shape. This also reduces the number of shares outstanding which produces a better price earnings. A lot of stock options can reduce this however.

This these are just some things I have learned is a novice investor over the years.