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first because it will take some practice to build your confidence. Just make sure the money you are using is money you can afford to lose and not your weekly house-keeping!

Day trading seem a bit daunting and too hands on to you? Relax it is not the only way to make money on the stock market. Value investing is probably more your style.

For this strategy choose well known companies you are familiar with and have confidence of their performance over a long period of time.

They will probably be "blue chip" companies, which means they have a proven track record and are in the top 100 - 200 companies listed on the stock exchange. Most blue chips pay dividends (a share of the companies annual profit earnings) and achieve a moderate steady growth over time.

Use the internet and the financial press to do your research, you can also go to a company's website and download their annual reports. When you are confident you have chosen three or four companies you think are reliable, use your internet account to buy them, then sit back and wait for the dividends to come.

An important thing to know when you invest in blue chips is that they will generally go up and down in line with the market's current sentiment in relation to world or local events.

If there is lots of good news and people are investing money the market is a bull market and market prices tend to go up taking the blue chips with it. On the other hand if something bad happens and the market goes into bear mode and nose-dives the blue chips usually follow.

Bear markets are not necessarily bad, especially if you have money to invest. If the blue chips are going down keep an eye on them. Once the dust has settled and the market stabilizes there are sure to be a lot of buying opportunities to be had by the astute investor.

If you were a trader it would be wise to try and buy in a bear market and sell in a bull market, it is just a matter of getting the timing right and knowing when to trade to get the best gains.

But you are not a trader and timing the market is not as easy as it sounds, so these market fluctuations do not worry you because historically blue chips go up over time, hence the reason they are often referred to as "bottom drawer shares".

All you need to do is sit by your swimming pool, relax and collect dividends.

The only time you should worry about your stocks going down is if it is just one particular stock that is in trouble, especially if it is making news headlines.

Evaluate your position without panicking.

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