Best route when getting into stocks as a hobby

Start a Schwab account. You can buy/sell stocks on the app very easily.

Put in X amount of dollars

Put half in SCHD

Put the other half in whatever you’d like

When you’re constantly out gaining SCHD (over at least a 6 month period), then you can put the half you had in SCHD into whatever’s working for you.

My favorite stable fund. Solid advise tbh

Hobbies lose money. Side hustle and treat it like a business or you are better off with another hobby.

Look for stocks with a good dividend yield so you can make money off them without having to sell. Pay attention to the company balance sheet - high debt to asset ratio is a higher risk of going bust.

Or, another way to go would be to open up a robinhood account and put is all on LVVV, UGAZ, and Dogecoin.

Don’t do it! Most money managers can not beat the S&P or total stock market funds. Start reading all the books about investing before you try that. Every dollar you lose at a young age is critical.

Tough crowd. If it's something you're really interested I say give it a shot.

I just started playing with penny stocks earlier this year. I just make sure to use leisure money and nothing more. I still put the same amount I into long term retirement funds as I did before.

Really glad I finally made the jump, really enjoying learning the trading game this far.

I'd say start with something like Schwab. No fees and you have access to everything.

I think it’s the use of the word “hobby” that’s putting some people off. Most think of a hobby as something one that does for fun, with no worries about how profitable the activity might be. I race cars for a hobby. But I know that Lewis Hamilton will never worry about me taking his seat at Mercedes. Some play golf or bass fish. But they know that they’ll never be seen on ESPN.

You can learn the mechanics and fundamentals of trading without ever putting money at risk. It’s called paper trading. That’s what I did as I was learning how to trade options years ago. Throwing money into something that you don’t fully understand is just an expensive way to get an education, might let you learn some really bad lessons/develop bad habits and will probably dissuade you from getting serious later on, because you’ll have it in your head that it’s a loser activity. Even as a hobby, I took lessons from pro drivers because I didn’t want to develop bad racing habits.

You and your friends can do whatever you want, but if you’re looking to trade with some play money, rather than invest (and hopefully you know that trading and investing are two totally different things), in my opinion you should study and understand trading strategies and then paper trade in order to back test what you’re seeking to achieve.

Either way, good luck.

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Throwing money into something that you don’t fully understand is just an expensive way to get an education,

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Its the best way to learn. Seeing the value of your account rise and fall is one hell of a motivator.

I think the point you make can be well taken.
Investing can be a great hobby. Trading is likely a very risky proposition for the “hobby” trader in the long run. There’s no way to better illustrate that than losing a little in short term trading while watching long term investments grow.

It would be a great idea and educational experience to take $500 - $2,500, open a brokerage account, and invest in some companies you like.
Much like someone else said, take half of it and buy an index ETF (SPY, VOO, DIA). Then compare the performance of your stock picks against the performance of the ETF.

I have a hobby: playing guitar. I’ve used it to make about $10k/year as side income.

I also invest in stocks through a Roth IRA.

Both are making me good money.