I am 23 and looking to start investing. At best, I can scrape up $10,000. I've been reading all the books I can find for the small investor and I'm becoming more and more confused. I feel I'm too ignorant to tap into buying stocks on my own right now, so I'm debating between US Treasury bonds and mutual funds. Additional info: I will not have to take this money out early for emergency use (I really want to start investing so I'll leave it alone no matter what). I don't have the option of a 401K or anything like that at a job. I don't know anyone who I could go talk to (tried my bank with no luck). Any suggestions?

Call a brokage firm i.e. Smith Barney, J.D. Edwards, Edward Jones, etc. and speak to a financial counselor.They will help you.

At your age you should learn to trade stocks as it is a skill that will last you a lifetime - even if you blow the $10K trying.I don't know which books you've read, check out the ones listed here:http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TradingZoom/

Invest it in your own education..identify and exploit your own strengths and increase your wisdom because you are your greatest asset. Then the answers will come naturally in the course of your lifes journey. Opportunity seeks out those who have the confidence to attract it. A $10,000 investment in stocks or bonds is not enough to make a difference right now but it will go a long way toward helping you find yourself.

Stick with mutual funds to start at one of the major fund managers (Vanguard, T. Rowe Price, etc.). Open an account directly with them - you don't want to invest in mutual funds through a brokerage account.

You're 23 years old and looking at Treasuries? At 23 years of age GROWTH is your main concern and you shouldn't be looking at Treasuries. Find a good growth mutual fund to place your $10k into, learn to invest consistently even at a small rate say $50 monthly. Open the account auto invest and reap the rewards later. Use NO LOAD funds, funds that don't cost you anything up front to invest in. Some quality families of funds are: Vanguard, T Rowe Price, etc. If you're that concerened look for a CFP (Certified Financial Planner) or ask someone with more already invested who advises them on investing. Don't burn out on all the information....just be sure you make a choice that's right for you under whatever your circumstances may be the $10k aside.

If your in illinois, I can help you. If you don't still email me at mackelcw@yahoo.com

Forget the mutual funds you won't learn anything. Check out fool.com; get a scottrade account and a morninstar subscription. You can learn all this without the help of a paid adviser = lemmings. Now I'm buying oil MRO; HES; OXY. Video games ATVI; ERTS. Gold AUY Healthcare HCSG; JNJ; WLP; UHN. MLPs BPL, TPP, ETP, SUG Media TWX. and others. Just start small, keep diversified, keep your winners sell your losers (more than 10-15% loss); take 50% profits over 50% gains and you will be fine. In the long run not buying mutual funds is the best way to learn the market, buy individual stocks and you will really learn something useful. Good luck.

Since you are a young investor you can be a bit more risky then most. At the very least I would recommend investing in an index ETF. The SPY is a great ETF that tracks the S&P 500 index. ETF's usually have a lower expense ratio then Mutual Funds, which makes them very attractive. Here is an article on Fool that explains the difference. http://www.fool.com/etf/etf02.htmIf you are bit more adventurous I would recommend picking some quality stocks to invest in. By quality I mean that they are financially strong and not too expensive. It hard to go into how to find stocks like this but one quick thing to look at is the P/E ratio of a company. A company with a ratio under 25 is probably what you'll want. You can find this info at http://finance.google.com/financeAs for finding out if it's a strong company. Read up on balance sheets, income statements, and especially ratios. Those can really help determine the health of a company. Happy investing!

You are starting at a great age & $10K can grow to an amazing size in 30 or 40 years.Start with either mutual funds or ETFs, but leave open the option to buy individual stocks in the future as you earn more spare cash. I'd recommend a discount online brokerage like ETrade, ScottTrade or Sharebuilder.Choose funds or ETFs that have low expense ratios (the amount the fund managers skim off the top). A mutual fund can have an automatic investment plan, so that you can add $20 or $50 per month without any additional fees. Make sure that you also automatically reinvest the dividend or capital gain payments back into more shares. You probably can't put the $10K directly in an IRA, but you should open a Roth IRA at the online brokerage and start adding to it ASAP.Taxes are a real drag on your returns and investments grow tax free in an IRA.I'd probably go with an S&P500 index fund right now. VFINX is a mutual fund, and either IVV or SPY works as an ETF. If you had invested $10K in the S&P500 30 years ago, you'd have $167K now.You might want some international stock exposure. I'd recommend the Dodge & Cox mutual fund DODFX.

Investing in mutual funds will provide much better returns than US Treasury bonds. One really good fund which I heard about on an investing talk radio show was UMBIX. It has an excellent 10 year history and I see no reason for that to change.