I'm 18 and in college with a little bit of money that I would like to find a way to invest in the stock market. Can I use online services with my PayPal account?
Please tell me all the ways I can get started on this and what you would suggest.
You are quite young so I presume you don't know too much about the financial markets yet. I think it is important for you to learn more about how the financial markets work for yourself rather than simply put your trust in the advice of financial trading companies. You can then start investing on a small scale once you decide on the type of markets and investment products you would like to invest in and how much risk you are willing to take
If you are ultimately interested in making a profit from price fluctuations either in the short or long term, have a look at a site called gnutrade.com (www.gnutrade.com)
The site has a fun game-like trading platform which is great for beginners and lets you trade on markets with small amounts, by trading on price movements. This means you don't have to get involved with the hassle and extra costs of buying the underlying markets. It also offers a variety of deposit methods.
You can try the platform for free without signing up so you might as well take a look and see if it suits you