With all of the choices out there, making good stock trading picks can be difficult. Here are 3 strategies.

If making fantastic stock trading picks was easy, wouldn’t we all quit our jobs and play the stock market all day? The truth is simple and obvious: The first skill that any investor or trader has to learn is how to pick their stocks. Let’s look at 3 strategies that can make your portfolio take off.

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Do your homework- It seems like a no brainer doesn’t it? Every day I talk to people and answer questions where they ask me what stock I would buy? While the question itself isn’t so terrible, the follow up response I get often comes the same day. They thank me for the name (that I told them to go home and research) and they are excited that they now own 100 shares. Homework takes time and there’s no way you can do your homework on a stock in a couple of hours. You will be crushed if you treat stock investing as gambling.

Invest in groups- For the amateurs who don’t have the time to go through the process of professional, full time investment professionals, consider an investment club. This is a group of people who pool their money and divide the responsibilities of maintaining their portfolio. Often the job of evaluating and making stock trading picks is assigned to various members of the club who have experience or knowledge in certain sectors of the market. How long would it take to build a house if only one person were building it? Divide the duties and you will make more money.

Have a set of rules- We have all heard that discipline is the key to being the best at anything and making money in the stock market is no exception. You have to develop a set of rules that you never break when making stock trading picks even if it means losing a little bit of profit. One of your rules may be that you should know if the stock you bought was a long term investment or a short term trade. Once that is established, you aren’t allowed to change it. Rules do one important thing: save you money.

If you don’t have the time or don’t feel confident that you can make the best investment choices, consider subscribing to a service like Action Alerts Plus where an expert like Jim Cramer is doing your research for you and all you have to do is buy and sell when they tell you to execute the trade. My secret is that I don’t have enough time to do all of my research so I let Action Alert Plus do it for me.

Are you tired of watching others make money in the stock market while your portfolio remains lukewarm? Click here to set your portfolio in to overdrive.

The first book I ever read about investing was Jim Cramer’s Real Money. Click here to go to the elementary finance bookstore to order your copy. You can also take a look at the book in the box above. Although the first book, it is still the book I reread once every year.