As I have said before, it was my grandmother who initially took me "under her wing" so to speak. She explained how the stock market worked in terms that I could understand at the time. She explained what exactly stocks were, how to buy and sell them, why to buy and sell them, the risks and rewards of buying/selling stocks, among many other things. After learning all of this stuff about it, I was really excited to get my feet wet.

My grandmother was very gracious and gave me some money to start, but on the condition that she had to help me choose my first investment. So we did a little bit of research together, and we bought about a thousand dollars worth of stocks. Over the next couple of days I tracked them religiously, checking the price every thirty minutes or so. Every time the price would go down I would get really scared that I would lose all of the money. And every time it went up I got really excited being able to see myself gain money from doing essentially nothing.

After a couple of weeks I got back together with my grandmother and we talked about a bit what happened, how I felt about it, and what I had learned from the experience. After that, to my sadness she sold the stocks and took her money back, leaving me with nothing. It was a great first experience however, and would give me good knowledge to lean back on in the future.