I'm a bit off a newbie - decided to enter the market at around the time of the GFC two years ago. But for what its worth...
I think ditch the broker - unless he is making you good money over and above what you can do yourself.
Spread the risk - don't go all-in. Not all is what it seems - CDU is a good example of what can go wrong.
I prefer small caps as they potentially have a huge upside that is often greater then the downside, even if you do lose all your investment in a few of them. If you are in a range of well researched, quality small caps then my experience has been that more will do well than poorly.
Stay with the good stocks. I jumped out of AND only a few months ago only to find that it has since doubled in price. Knowing when to sell is even harder than when to buy! I have no idea what the secret is there, yet to work that one out.
At the end of the day it is not very different to gambling so be aware that you can very easily lose everything.
P.S. Those Daily Reckoning etc ads are based around buying at the low and selling at the high, which no one can pick! They are very misleading (in my opinion) so don't get sucked in by them.
