Playing the Stock Market? (week 1)

After my friend finally cracked me, I finally succumb to the dark side (also because all my other ideas were shut down).  We have decided that we will start with an investment of five hundred dollars and our end goal is a mere ten times the initial investment (should be okay).  This is something that would easily be presentable showing our success or failure. The end product would be a stock market survival guide. This will be a fresh slate, so there aren't currently any successes or failures but hopefully by the end of our experience we will have a couple of both as I believe that failures are just as important as successes if not more important in the learning process and hopefully if we collect enough data about what works and what doesn't we will make a stock survival guide. Hopefully this turns out as well as i'm hoping however only time will tell.