How should I choose my first stock ? What are some of your guiding principles when choosing stocks? Should I look at undervalued or emerging/growth companies ?

If you are new to investing, I will think that buying indexes or ETFs as the first step instead of thinking of what stock to buy might be something you want to consider.

Buying indexes or ETFs first allows you to diversify your holdings right from the beginning. If you are to buy stocks right from the beginning, you got to spend a lot more time thinking what are the other stocks to buy to balance and optimize your portfolio.

I find the other way of first buying indexes or ETFs, and then slowly finding worthy individual stocks to seek alpha in a much better way in terms of both getting reasonably good returns and avoiding big drawdown.