there are alot of questions here, so i’ll leave the ones that i dont know much about alone. a good way to get a taste of the stock market is to start in a mutual fund, you are still buying shares but for the most part they are much lower risk than individual stocks. typically your local bank branch will have a person who is trained as an investment advisor, who will give you questionnaires and talk to you about what your goals are, what your time frame is, how much risk you are willing to accept, etc and give you recommendations on what investments to consider. in my experience, the advice is almost always to get into a mutual fund. some advice from personal experience though, be sure to read the fine print. some of these funds charge a fee if you take your money out too soon, and some charge a sizeable annual account service fee, which should be taken into account when you look at an otherwise attractive outlook for the fund.