Before you start investing, you need to read market signals as an active investor. You will want to grasp a general understanding of market behaviors. Employment There are two United States labor reports that investors observe. The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the Employment Situation Summary early in the morning on the first Friday of the month. Many corporations use this report to gauge how much product they will move based on working people. Secondly, experienced investors use this report to gauge the economy's overall health. As someone wondering how you start investing in stocks, watching for this report and reading writeups released by several analysts is a great idea. You can also expect to determine what experts believe will happen to interest rates and if inflation will go up or down. In particular, Substantial employment numbers usually strengthen the U.S. dollar A strong employment report can indicate the economy is growing too quickly, leading to inflation fears. A strong employment report can trigger fears about a rise in interest rates. A strong report can be viewed as a sign of consumer optimism. Inflation To learn how to make money in the stock market for beginners, you will also need to watch inflation rates. A critical monthly report is the Consumer Price Index. The comprehensive information includes food and energy, but many who are not buying and selling shares in those industries discard those figures because they are highly volatile. When you figure out how to get started in the stock market, you will want to watch for the Producer Price Index, which measures the cost of purchases that most people make. The government releases this report near the middle of each month. In particular, when you need to understand how to invest in the stock market, watch the industry level classifications for areas that you are thinking about investing in as they show you essential clues on industry costs. Additionally, watch the commodity classification reports as they are released in over 3,800 categories. One of the reasons to work with an experienced investment advisor when you are first learning how to start stock market investing is to understand the Commodity-Based Final Demand-Intermediate Demand report. While you are learning how to start investing in stocks, you may wish that oil prices would fall so that you had more money to invest by spending less at the gas station. A steep rise in oil prices can make it harder for companies to make money. Alternatively, when you learn how the stock market works, understand that falling prices can lead to losing corporate profits as demand for products often falls off. Consumer Confidence Index While you are learning how to start doing stocks, begin watching the Consumer Confidence Index, released on the last Tuesday of the month. The information in this report should guide your answer to how I can start investing in stocks because it shows how confident people feel about their future. While retail spending reports, like the one released by the U.S. Census, are lagging indicators, it is still important to watch them when figuring out how to do stocks for beginners. The Housing Market You will also want to watch a variety of housing market reports. When analyzing how to get into stocks for beginners, one key one to explore is the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index. This report aggravates data from 20 U.S. cities showing consumer confidence into the future as it is a vital sign of how willing consumers are to commit to a large purchase. If you want to start investing in the stock market as an active investor, you need to monitor and analyze a lot of data that can turn into a full-time job. Many investors prefer passive investing because data shows that individual stocks picked by active investors do not substantially outperform passive, diversified total market index funds.