Financial markets. Which are the best?

Stay away from the options, currency or commodities markets - there is an old joke about all three - how do you make a million dollars in commodities/currency/options markets? Start with 2 million.

Start with the stock markets and do your homework. Stay away from penny stocks (too volatile and many times not enough liquidity (if you do not already know what those terms mean, you are not ready).

Liquidity is key. Most liquid markets are stock index futures, treasury note futures, crude oil futures, and the currency futures and forex. If you have to trade stocks or ETFs, stay with the most liquid ones, like AAPL, IWM, SPY, and QQQ.

Steve gave good advice. I'd go a little further and say avoid individual stocks at first, get to know the markets via funds, mutual funds or exchange traded funds. They use a basket of stocks, so you get some diversification and less risk. To learn about them go to a financial website, say MSN and look up the top performing ETF's over 3mos and 1yr. Out of the top 20, pick 10 different ones (only one gold fund, even though the top 5 may be gold funds). They must also trade a min of 100,000 shares a day and be in existence for more than 1yr. If you can't find 10 different ones out of the top 20, no worries. What you would do is divide your money into 10 equal slots. Say you have 10k, that means $1,000 per slot. If you can only fill 6 slots, then rest is to remain in cash. You rebalance (check the top performers and remove if yours are no longer on the list, replace with one that made the list) as often as you want, typically once or twice per year but quarterly is fine too. This is called the hot hand method.