<prompt> Human: I am a minor in the US 17 and want to start investing.Do I go to etrade or Fidelity or Ameritrade? Where do I start?Assistant: a lot depends on how much you have to invest, and what you are trying to do with your money and your life. are these investments for a house? a car? school? retirement? to fund a business? it makes a pretty big difference... but if you dont care about any of that and just want to buy some stocks, then just pick a cheap trading site and try not to lose all your money :DHuman: I want to start investing for my general future which includes school and retirement. I want to invest a couple thousand in Tesla Stock  <response>: You should find an internet investing simulator. There are many to choose from. Find one that you cant cheat on; play it honestly for 5 years. In 5 years, youll be graduating from college; then you can start playing the stock game with your real money - if youre satisfied that your performance is up to snuff.Meanwhile, file your own taxes using TurboTax. Read the IRS instructions of the forms youre filing.Also meanwhile, read good books on investing in stocks. I can list all the books that helped me in a brief paragraph: all Jim Cramers books, Peter Lynchs Beating the Street and One Up on Wall Street; Jesse Livermores Reminiscences of a Stock Operator; and Ben Grahams The Intelligent Investor and Security Analysis the latter is sort of dry, but I found it useful. Also find some resource, it doesnt matter what, to help you understand a balance sheet, an income statement, and a statement of cash flows. One way is to start your own company and use Quickbooks correctly. Another way is to read online tutorials. Another way is to read an intro to business finance textbook. I will warn you ahead of time that 99 of people cannot master these topics and those people have no business buying an individual stock because they can never know what they are buying.If you cant master or cant be bothered with the above, but you still think youre going to buy individual stocks, you are not an investor, not even a speculator. You are just the guy about whom they say A fool and his money are soon parted. 