Stock market investing can be a great way to acquire a little extra income. The amount of money you can make may truly shock you. But, to maximize the money you make by investing in stocks, you have to be smart about it, assuming your desire is to be successful. Read on to learn stock market investing essentials.

It is vitally important that you confirm the reliability of any investment broker before you consider handing over your hard-earned money to them. There are free resources available to help you perform this confirmation quickly and easily. If you take a little time to investigate the organization and understand their business practices, you will help to protect yourself against investment fraud.

If you are holding some common stock, you need to exercise your right to vote as a shareholder in the company. When major changes or merges might happen you could have a say in it because of the amount of stocks you hold with a given company. You will have a chance to vote either by proxy via mail or at the annual shareholder meeting.

Remember that stocks are not just simple pieces of paper that you buy and sell for trading purposes. Once you own a stock, you now have partial ownership of whatever company is behind that investment. Stocks entitle you to earnings and profits. In several cases, you can vote in major corporate leadership elections.

Diversify your portfolio a bit. Like the old adage says, do not put your eggs into one basket. If you sink your entire investment budget into a single company, for instance, you will be in serious trouble if that company begins to flounder.

Try and earn at least 10% a year since you can get close to that with an exchange traded fund. To figure the potential stock return, add the dividend yield to the growth rate of projected earnings. For a yield of 2 percent and with 12 percent earnings growth, you are likely to have a 14 percent return.

As stated previously, a good way to make a lot of money is by investing it in stocks. However, if you want to make a profit from investing, you need to learn the basics and be knowledgeable about investing. If you follow the advice in this article, you’ll soon become an expert in investing in stocks.

When you make the decision as to which stock you are going to invest in, you should invest no more than 10% of your capital funds into this choice. By only investing a certain percentage of your portfolio in each stock you are protecting yourself from a devastation in case the stock does drop quickly.