How to start trading/investing in market

This is the one question most of my friends ask me. I thought of writing about it long back, but I dont know somehow I forgot that. Now Kuki has reminded me by asking.

I am starting from very basic things like Demat account, Depository & etc.

Now if anybody wants to trade in Indian Stock Market, that person should have Demat account. Demat means dematerialisation that means conversion of paper form of stock to electronic form of stock. Now for Demat one needs to have following documents...
1. PAN card,
2. Bank Account (For online demat account person needs to have ebanking enabled account and for offline demat account, normal bank account. In online, account-holder himself place the order by loging in and where as ofline demat account, account-holder needs to call the broker or go to brokerage office ask the broker to place the order.),
3. Id proof,
4. Photographs,
5. Address Proof,

Now coming to Depository Participant or DP, person needs to open his Demat account only with those brokerages which have depository facility. But now in Indian Stock Market, almost all brokers have DP in NSDL or CSDL or both. In simple meaning, DP is like a bank where you can store your shares. So while opening the Demat account you need to open DP also. So you can open your Demat account with any broker like GEOJIT, ICICI DIRECT, SHAREKHAN, INDIA INFOLINE & etc. Before opening the Demat account important thing to check is their Brokerage charges to for intraday and delivery as wel as online and offline accounts.

Now about trading is the one thing where each individual's ideas, scripts or holding periods vary. So I should not tell you people to trade/invest in in particular stocks in a particular manner. But if anybody ask me how I started trading & how I am doing now, then I can say something like this...

I started trading when I started MBA course. Initially my college seniors & Navigators(The Finance Club) helped me a lot because trading or stock market was purely new thing to me as I was from engineering background. One more thing that helped me is MARKET ITSELF! Yes really, because later parts of 2007 saw strong rally of bull run which helped to learn lot things like CIRCUIT BREAKER STOCKS (which were my favorite stocks at that point time), high growth stocks & etc. Then in my summers I did Technical Analysis which is helping me a lot in trading now a days in volatile market also. Initially I started with One Demat account, but presently I am maintaining 4 Demat accounts...

And coming to my strategies, I do my own analysis about stocks which are moving in certain pattern. Many people say dont listen to TALKING HEADS of news channels like CNBC, NDTV Profit & etc. I say "listen to them but do your own analysis on their scripts". And then decide whether to go for it or not. If yes then decide when to enter the script and when to exit the script. And believe me "MARKET IS ALWAYS RIGHT". Why I am saying this is because instead of cracking our heads on WHY market(or individual script) is moving like this or that, go for WHAT NEXT?

So as I always say What is more important than the Why in market for traders!
I do take help some websites like...

money.rediff.com(Good for beginners, now it is improved a lot with lot of information)
moneycontrol.com
icharts.in ( for technical analysis)
bloomberg.com (for world market trends)

For any further queries you can always come back to me...