<prompt> Human: Hey personal finance. I am interested in investing in the stock market, but I have no clue where to start. I am completely clueless as to how to invest, and how to do research into stocks. Please help me out!Just for clarity, I am a college student who works and makes just about 800 a month. If that helps at all.  <response>: Step 1 - Purchase stocks Step 2 - Lose money invested in those stocks Step 3 - ??? Step 4 - Profit!But really, if you want to learn a bit and play around a bit, first open a Roth IRA. Then at least youll begin saving for retirement, and any gains you have will be tax free.The next step is deciding how much money youre willing to lose. Only use that for your first few purchases, because theres a good chance to you will lose a lot to all of it. I would advise 34 of the money you want to mess with into a more secure fund, and 14 to buy some stocks and play around and learn while you read up on the subject. 