Picking a stock or following a particular strategy of stock picking may vary with the individual investor, his risk, experience level, style of investing, duration of investment, etc. The strategy of stock investment is dynamic to each investor, and it develops gradually with continuous learning, investing, skill, etc.

Before starting to select any stock for investments, investors should understand the following things:

• Decide how much in total do you want to invest?
• Direct stock investing and in good company stocks may demand more money for investment. Hence, better to check the price of stocks and your affordability.
• Accessing the risk as an investor. It means to determine what degree of risk you can afford to take.
• Make sure to plan before you get into stock investment. Do not jump in the market without any plan; like “Let me start & see how it goes.” You need to do some homework, research before making any decisions.
• Start learning with market basics, market cycles and then move towards learning about fundamentals of company stock, charts, financial ratios, etc.
• Simultaneously with learning, start small investments.  It’s one of the common myth that investors think they need to know everything before investing in the stock market. Your investments and mistakes in the stock market (or in investments) could make you learn more. Start with small investments.The secret of success is to learn as much as you need at each stage, to move forward, to find an Edge of your own, and to work on it consistently, to improve it over and over again.
• Do not fall prey for schemes like ‘Guaranteed returns, or book short term profit or all its synonyms.There is no such thing exist in the stock market. 
• Last but not least- Keep your emotions far away. Your emotions should not lead the way of your investment journey.

As your learnings, experience, and success rate increase, increase your degree of risk and apply new strategies with the stocks you pick to invests in.

Now let’s understand some simple strategies to pick stock(s): –

1.To research or to do homework does not mean to spent hours and dig out information on the internet. It is impossible to read everything for thousands of companies that are listed on the stock market. All you need is to be more observant and learn about the popular products, or people use them often in their daily lives. Like you might have heard often about food companies like Nestle, Britannia, IT companies like TCS, Infosys, Banks like HDFC, SBI. (This is an illustrative example only & not a recommendation to buy any stock). One does not need to do much analysis or research for such stocks due to their strong presence in the market, years of proven performance, good fundamentals, etc.  Also, you can understand these businesses/products/service easily. 

2. Copycat- This is probably one of the easiest strategy. Simply pick stocks from an Index or find a good mutual fund scheme and check their stock holdings. Here you can get the ready list of stocks that are picked by market experts or fund managers. If you do not have time for research, this is the quickest way of narrowing down your search.

3. Last is to do your research and invest in those stocks. To start with this strategy, you can make a ‘watch list’ of your favorite stocks in which you want to invest. You can regularly monitor and research these stocks based on the following few factors:

1. Is the company profitable? -Read about Company fundamentals like book value, P/E ratio, P/B ratio, EPS, P&L statement, assets & liabilities, Debt/equity ratio, etc.
2. Find out the revenue growth of the company. A positive revenue trend line shows well for the stock price, but if revenue is flat or declining, it’s important to find out the reason before investing.
3. History of returns/dividend– If a company has given a good dividend regularly in the past or increase its dividend, that’s generally a good sign. However, a high dividend payout should not be the only criterion.
4. Understanding the business, products, or services of the company and its future growth prospects. As an investor, you need to understand and be able to explain what a company does.
5. Find out the company’s future and growth potential. Like will people be interested or require to use the product or service in the next 15-20 years? Investing in a company stock with long life means earning compound returns. The company’s growth will bring growth in your money too as a stockholder.
6. Check the MOAT factor- means the company’s ability to maintain the competitive advantage over its competitors to thrive and protect its future profit.
7. Few other factors to consider are the type of stock like cyclical/secular/penny, stock volume/liquidity, how much promoters pledged and their holdings, etc.

Not every investor is good at stock investing, hence, the value investing style involves a great deal of analysis and research. Most investors do not have the time or energy to follow this approach, but if one has an interest, has time & willingness to learn, he/she can be a great stock investor and create wealth in long term.

Remember the following points in all this process:

a) Do not add too many stocks or change stocks frequently in the watchlist. It might create confusion.
b) Be sure to keep your expectations low about returns. Don’t expect double or quadruple your money in a short time., The key is- Patience.

c) Stock market is quite volatile, ups and downs are part of it, hence make sure to hold for long term.
d) Keep tracking your investments, stocks regularly and make changes if required.