Those nice friendly guys at the loan company who wanted to increase your credit card limit only last month now turn into Don Corleone and the boys from Mob! They start to slap on late charges and the exorbitant interest now starts to attract interest on itself and, and Well you get the picture. So what do you do when you find yourself facing sudden debt? There are many ways that investors try to work out which way the market or an individual stock will move. They will look at any number of technical indicators that they feel will give them a clue as to what may happen. Of course outside influences can also affect matters. These can happen very rapidly without warning and send prices shooting either up or down and totally confounding the indicators. For those who have decided that they would like to go for the full blooded approach of buying stocks and shares directly they need to have between $3,000 and $5,000 if they want to use a full service stock broker. There are a few brokers who will consider investments of less but they will need seeking out. It was to London that the first American Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, turned when he wanted to begin development of economic power in the New World. Hamilton founded the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street in the late 18th century where it was joined around fifty years later by what is now the American Stock Exchange. Of course from your point of view you are probably going to be benefiting by having lower repayments, less worry and you'll get your credit history back on track. So it's win-win. Now to actually get a bad credit debt consolidation loan you're going to have to convince the bank or loan company that they really are going to be benefiting. Obviously you don't want to lose it but if you absolutely can't afford to then you should look for something which carries a significantly lower level of risk. Likewise it's important to feel comfortable knowing that you should be investing in the markets for the medium to long term. That's generally regarded as 5 years plus.