If you're investing a large amount of life savings, then utilize a solid broker. Look for an ethical company with easy to reach employees whom you personally get to know by name.

Never invest more than you can afford to lose at any given moment, especially if you're doing it on your own.

Read, study, and learn about the potential investments you're eyeballing, and follow your educated instincts on it.

Diversify, and never put all of your eggs into one basket. Not only does this mean that you should never go all-in on one stock, but it also means that your holdings should be diverse in terms of assets (i.e., cash, house, land, etc.). This will save you against a complete disaster should a downfall occur in any given area.

Although short-term rockets are awesome and do occur, just remember that it's best to plan for the long haul. So long as you're steadily gaining and not losing, you're doing alright. There will ALWAYS be dips and bad days, but if the general trajectory is upward then you're GTG.

Don't panic. One stock I recently purchased went back down from a dramatic rise all because of politics, but my overall investments are still blazing. I'm still holding onto the lowered shares as well, because I know it can go back up if the politics butts out. Regardless, I'm still covered because what do I have is diverse enough to still be well into the green. In fact, one of the stocks which first got me into all of this had some serious drops when negative merger news emerged every once in a while, but I seriously made out on it because I played the patient game.

If you're investing a large amount of life savings, then utilize a solid broker. Look for an ethical company with easy to reach employees whom you personally get to know by name.

Never invest more than you can afford to lose at any given moment, especially if you're doing it on your own.

Read, study, and learn about the potential investments you're eyeballing, and follow your educated instincts on it.

Diversify, and never put all of your eggs into one basket. Not only does this mean that you should never go all-in on one stock, but it also means that your holdings should be diverse in terms of assets (i.e., cash, house, land, etc.). This will save you against a complete disaster should a downfall occur in any given area.