Well the way stocks work is you buy a share, hopefully at a low price, and then sell hopefully at a high price, but sometimes that isn't the case and you lose money selling at a lower price than you bought it at.

The first thing you want to do is hire a broker, then decide what stock you want, brokers usually cost about $10, so not much if you are going to buy $1800 worth of stocks, but anyway, I would not spend the whole $1800, because if stocks go down you will lose all of your money, I would invest about $1400, but in multiple stocks so if one stock goes down you still have a few more. Anyway I think some good stocks are: Tesla Motors, Verizon, Wells Fargo, Yahoo, and also I would invest in a 3-D printing stock, because I really see 3-D printing being the wave of the future.

Since you say you have no idea how stocks work you want to get good, actionable information. If I were you I would start with William J. O'Neil's Investors Business Daily. Its a newspaper and he has several books that you may be able to find at your local library. One of his really good books is entitled How To Make Money in Stocks. Complete Stock Inverting System. This book comes with a DVD.