What is the least amount of money required to start investing in the stock market?

$500. I’ve been trading for a few years and can tell you it has a VERY STEEP learning curve. Here is what I would do for the next 3 months if you are serious.

1. $0 - Watch as many YouTube videos on trading as you can. This guy is a friend of mine and is the real deal, he puts out alot of free content that you can review. Link > Real Life Trading

1. $150/mo (x3 months) using DasTrader Pro, ask for a “demo account” (real-time prices & trades, but using a demo account — not real money, so you won’t lose anything). Link > Developer of DAS Trader suite of products. You can get a feel for how the buy/sell orders are placed as well, etc.

2. $0 - Keep a journal of your trades in Google Drive/Excel for review at the end of each month. Keep the ticker, entry, stop, exit & profit/loss amount as well as “reason for entering”. It’s more important to build a solid strategy/system than to make money.

3. $50 dinner w/ significant other to decide if it’s worth putting real money into or decide it “isn’t your thing.” During this time you can try to figure out if you want to be a day trader, swing trader or longer term investor and you can narrow some of the strategies shown in the YouTube videos. There are different strategies for different timeframes.

4. At the end of each month, review your trades from #3 . Your goal is to build/follow your strategy/system, not to make money, your strategy/system will make money over time, but only if you follow your own rules and don’t get emotional—this is very important.

My above suggestions are exactly how I started years ago — using free videos and a live demo account for several months. To really get good at something, you need to have about 10,000 hours of experience…(roughly 5 years full time).