I own a couple good stocks like wal-mart and Boeing. However those are out of my price range and I've never purchased another share since the initial buy. However they have been great stocks.
Currently I've only started investing a little amount. I currently own XJT(coming to bite me but no reason to sell. It was cheap when I bought it so no harm no foul). I also have a couple of iShares. They seem to be doing very well. Well they were. My current portfolio dropped 19.4% within the past two weeks. However I've decided to buy more this next week. Things will be tight till the next paycheck but a little suffering now can make life a lot better in the long run.
Vegabond could probably give better stats but I want to say the stock market has averaged 12% a year since the great depression. Keeping that in mind I don't do the whole buy/sell game unless it's on an individual stock that's shouting at me. I treat my portfolio more like a 401k. I just put what I can in when I can and spread it out. I let it build up in a money market account until it's enough to purchase something then I decided on which one/s to put them in. I like the ishares. I use morningstar.com as well to research them some.
I know everyone says to max your 401K first but on first year F/O pay that will never happen. I put 10% into my 401k and the rest into my investment account so I can have cash readily available should the shyt hit the fan.