The first step is often the toughest. In order to make money in the stock market, you first must commit money and that comes with your first round of stock trading picks. With all of the stocks to choose from, how do you know which stocks are going to make you money and which ones are going to rob you of your hard earned money?

You will hear the “experts” far too many times say that buy and hold is dead and fundamental and technical analysis doesn’t matter when such a large volume of part time day traders are moving the market based on trends rather than analysis. I’m going to make you a promise: if you operate using that reasoning, you will lose money.

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It all starts with research. You have to pay your dues. Learn to analyze the charts, read all of the articles, and listen to the conference calls. Some of this will be tedious and boring but this is your money that we’re talking about so doing a less than complete job could cost you far more than just your time. There is no excuse for bad stock trading picks.

I have other articles about how to make the best stock trading picks by using research methods that work but for now, I want to give you four websites that can help you find the information you will need to make those educated choices.

Yahoo! Finance- I don’t recommend Yahoo! for much but I really like their finance section. It’s easy to use, all of the charting tools that you need are available, you can make a virtual portfolio to test some of your stock trading picks, and you any and all news you would need to make educated choices is here. The best thing about it is that there is no membership section. The whole thing is free!

Your local business section- Many stock picking experts suggest that you invest in a stock that has local ties. Because I’m just down the road from Proctor and Gamble, my local newspaper has a lot of information about the rumored product launches, layoffs, and other items of local interest. What is helpful is that before this information reaches Wall St., it often starts as a rumor in my local paper. You need to keep an eye on the business section of your paper.

Your online broker website- It confounds my mind how many people are trading through online brokers who have amazing research tools. My broker, Scottrade, has more research tools than I would be able to use. Their site even has automatic interpretation of the more complicated charts. Anything I would need, they have. So many people don’t have any idea what their broker has for them. You should be an expert on the research tools available through your broker.

CNBC.com- I use this site for premarket quotes, and late breaking news. This is my go-to site for news from world markets and the numerous blogs that are written by the big names in the investing world.

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.