Welcome to the forums!
Lesson one:
There's basically two types of traders:
1) Fundamental - Goes by financials and other classic information.
2) Technical - Goes by Greencat's methods, looks purely at the "numbers" aspect.
I'm a mixed trader with a focus on fundamental. Most of my buying is for my future retirement, so I focus on big board stocks of well established companies. Where my money is pretty darn safe and I can get steady growth and nice dividends.
The majority of the traders on this forum are technical and they like penny stocks. With these, you can turn a little bit of cash into a lot of leverage by purchasing a large number of shares. The problem is the risk is huge. You can lose your money just as fast as you make it. Just be prepared to lose money, it's all part of the game. The idea is to make more than you lose...obviously....LOL....but you WILL lose.
My best advice....READ! There's a wealth of info on the web. Do your own DD! We have a whole forum section on DD, go read. Don't ever trust 100%what people post or say anywhere on the web. Find it for yourself and make sure it's from a legit source. For every legit article on a stock, there's a BS one somewhere. LOL
Good Luck!