Does anyone here invest? If so, I'm looking for help on learning how to do my homework with it, such as what kind of things should I look for in a company to determine whether it is going to go up or down. I know its all still about risk but there are ways to minimize it if you take the time to learn about the company but I dont know where to start.

That aside, I started with $2600 in august on stocks that I thought were common sense such as Google, Goldman Sachs, and Baidu.com and am up to $4,300. I picked these because I know they are all companies who arent going to fail and I was right, they have all gone WAY up since august. However, I would like to start some riskier investments with the chance of a higher return and want to learn what to look for. Anyone got any links?

I just got this incredible tip in an e-mail:


Other than that I just know that the value of stocks is much more dictated through supply and demand than the actual worth of a company.
You could see that perfectly when Apple announced the iPhone. Suddenly a whole lot of people thought that it'd be good to own Apple stocks, so they bought (or tried to buy) as many as they could get, making the prices rise constantly. If you were one of the lucky few who'd bought stocks at the beginning of the day you would be much richer by now.
And everything just because they announced a new product. Not because they made more money through this new product.