Stock Markets For Dummies

How To Make Money In Stocks?

The answer to long-term wealth is often touted as stocks. However, while they grow exponentially over the years, predicting their daily movements accurately is impossible.

Which brings us back to the question: How can you make money in stocks?

Adhere to some proven practices and be patient,

Buy and Hold

Long-term investors believe in time in the market over timing the market. You can make money in stocks with the buy-and-hold strategy, hold stocks for a long time rather than trading.

Funds Over Individual Stocks

Reduce risk and increase the probability of returns by opting for diversification. You can maximize your diversification by opting for exchange-traded funds (ETF). Individual stocks take time, a fair amount of investing expertise, and a sizable cash commitment to diversify. And talking of funds, they enable you to buy exposure to hundreds of individual investments with a single share. It is impossible to predict which companies will deliver outsize returns.

And hence, experts recommend investing in funds that passively track major indexes, the S&P 500 or Nasdaq. This allows you to profit from the approximate 10% average annual returns of the stock market easily and inexpensively.

Reinvest Dividends

Businesses often pay their shareholders a dividend, a reward based on their earnings. The small amounts you get as dividends may appear negligible but they make up a large portion of the stock market’s historic growth.

Choose the Right Investment Account

Apart from the investments you choose, the account you hold them in is also important. While some investment accounts give you tax advantages of some kind like tax-free withdrawals. Investing in the right account is crucial to optimizing your returns. Taxable accounts are good for your investments, you do not typically lose their returns to taxes or for money that you need in the next few years or decades. On the contrary, investments with the potential to lose returns to taxes or those you aim to hold for the very long term are suited for tax-advantaged accounts.

Lastly, if you want to make money in stocks, go long instead of speculating stocks. If you chose to go short, invest in low-cost index funds and hold them as long as they need their money. Have patience and trust your diversified investments to pay off over the long term.

Stock Markets For Dummies

Get familiar with online resources that help evaluate stocks and protect your earned money. Do your due diligence by researching the company’s stock before investing. Here are all the reminders you need to keep track of in this insane and equally intelligent arena,

• It’s not just a stock you are buying, but a company.
• Your primary goal should be making a profit from the company’s long-term success.
• Buying stocks when the company is not particularly making progress means you are speculating.
• Stocks should make 100% of your portfolio.
• A severe bear market or a market with prolonged price declines does not make for a good investment but it does offer buying opportunities for profitable companies.
• A stock price depends on the company. And, the company depends on its environment- its customer base, its industry, the general economy, and the political climate.
• Use common sense and logic when it comes to buying good stock other than expert advice.
• Know why you are investing in stocks and why in one particular stock.
• If you are unsure of the prospects of a company or even if you are sure, use stop-loss orders or trailing stops.
• Continue monitoring your stocks even when you are going long.
• Research the companies you are considering investing in. pay attention to earnings, sales, debt, and equity when looking at a company’s main financial statements.
• Also, check the financial ratios before buying stock in a company, it shows the financial footing of the company. The ratios are Price-to-earnings ratio (P/E), Price-to-sales ratio (PSR), Return on equity (ROE), Earnings growth, and Debt-to-asset ratio.

Stock Market Basics

Not knowing phrases like “earning movers” and “intraday highs” is okay but there is some jargon and industry processes you need to know before you start trading. Stock trading for dummies can seem tricky but one can start by understanding the stock market and some basic information about how stock trading works.

The stock market comprises exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq. Exchanges bring buyers and sellers together and list particular stocks, acting as a market for the shares of those stocks. The exchange tracks the price and the supply and demand of each stock.

Individual traders trade through brokers, you place your stock trades through the broker, which deals with the exchange on your behalf. The NYSE and the Nasdaq open at 9:30 a.m. and close at 4 p.m.

Understanding the stock market

You might’ve heard phrases like the stock market is up or down, these generally refer to one of the major market indexes. A market index measures the performance of a group of stocks, these represent the market as a whole or a sector of the market like technology or retail companies.

The S&P 500, the Nasdaq composite, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average are often used to track the overall performance of the market. Investors use indexes to gauge the performance of their portfolios and inform their stock trading decisions. You can invest in entire indexes through index funds and ETFs, these track a specific index or sector of the market.

Stock trading information

Investors are often advised to build a strong, diversified portfolio of stocks or stock index funds and stick to it through tough times and good. While this works well for long-term investors, the market also has something for people who like thrill- enter stock trading. With stock trading, you buy and sell stocks frequently and attempt to time the market.

Stock traders aim at capitalizing on short-term market events to sell stocks for a profit and buy when they are low. Day traders buy and sell several times throughout the day. Active traders place a dozen or more trades monthly. Investors trading stocks have to do extensive research and devote hours a day to following the market. They resort to technical stock analysis and use tools to chart a stock’s movements to find trading opportunities and trends. Online brokers often offer stock trading information, including analyst reports, stock research, and charting tools.

What are the Risks Of Investing?

Stock market investment has so far given the best returns among all the other assets like gold, bond, funds. But, there is a catch, the return from the market is not guaranteed and you may lose all your money in stocks. Know the types of risk involved in the stocks to steer clear of them and manage them better.

Market Risk

Also called systematic risk, market risk is based on the day-to-day price fluctuation in the market. Market indexes fluctuate throughout the day and it affects the returns from a stock.

Business Risk

This risk depends on the business and escalates if the business is not doing well. Failure of management, poor quarter-by-quarter results, are some of the business risks. You can mitigate this by diversifying your portfolio.

Liquidity Risk

You should always check the solvency of the company before investing in a stock. High debt indicates that the company finds it hard to pay bills. In these cases, they end up cutting dividends too.

Taxability Risk

The government brings changes to taxes quite often, affecting the stock price. Further, other industries are taxed higher than others and hence, their net profit after tax is likely to be less.

Interest Rate Risk

The open market or global market interest rates change constantly. And this can positively or negatively affect the stocks based directly on the interest rate. If the interest rates are high, it can be challenging to borrow money at high rates. The bond market also declines as the interest rate increases, affecting corporate bonds.

Regulatory Risks

Numerous regulations are imposed in the different industries and losing any manufacturing rights followed by a regulatory effect can impact the company’s profit and also its stock price.

Inflationary Risks

Increasing inflation can affect the price of raw materials and hence affect production cost.

Basic terminologies of online trading

Online trading has a lot of terms and popular usages. Let’s look at the basics of online trading,

Equity

Equity in the stock market is the number of shares owned by a company. You (an investor) buy an equivalent degree of ownership in the company when you buy the shares of a company. The shares or equity are bought and sold among investors in the stock market. ‘Stock’ is synonymous with ‘equity’.

Ask/Offer

The ask price or an offer is the lowest the seller of a stock can go.

Bid

The bid is the highest amount of money a potential buyer of the stock is willing to pay for a share of that stock. If multiple buyers are after a stock, a bid taken among buyers ends when one buyer places a bid that the other buyers cannot or are not willing to match.

Spread

The difference between the bid and the ask price is known as the ask-bid spread. The bid is generally lower than the ask price and the spread is dependent on the demand and supply.

Exchange

An exchange is where various securities are traded, it is a place or an electronic market.

Broker

A broker is an intermediary that connects an investor to the exchange, they purchase or sell stocks on behalf of an investor for a commission.

Bull Market / Bear Market

The bull market is when the prices of the stocks are increasing and the market is on an upward trend. A bear market is when the prices of stocks are falling and the market is considered to be on a downward trend. The two indicate the current trend in the stock market.

Trading Account

Since the stock market has become electronic, the traders have to open an online trading account with a registered broker to execute their trades electronically. All orders to buy or sell shares are carried out through this trading account.

Volatility

Volatility is the rate of price fluctuations of a share. Extreme volatility means the stock prices dip and rise daily. Traders often cash in on the risks of highly volatile stocks and prefer to go along with less volatile stocks.

Yield

Yield is the return of investment on stock, it is expressed in percentages.

Try a stock market simulator before investing real money

You can enter the world of investing without risking your capital by using a stock simulator. An online trading account with virtual dollars will give you a real idea of what trading is like and how you would react with your real money.

If you have set your mind on trading, it is a good idea to try a simulator or watch some stocks and see if it is really your thing. Have a diversified portfolio with mutual funds or exchange-traded funds.

Why should you care about capital markets?

Healthy capital markets have many overall macroeconomic advantages, being a driver for economic growth and development in an economy being one of them. Capital markets bring savers and investors together and pool risks correctly, they enable long-term projects to thrive in an economy. They have many lucrative advantages for investors and business developers as well.

Capital markets help develop and grow your business on a larger scale and help you build and launch new products and services at a business developer level. At an investor level, the market allows you to enjoy returns on your investment through capital gains such as direct dividend payments or capital appreciation with higher liquidity.

Investors also enjoy access to capital gains while staying clear of occupational and management hazards of owning the company. A well-developed capital market gives a wide variety of financial products to invest and diversifies their risk and maximizes return on investment. The fundamental goal of capital markets is raising capital for entities and they have a simple structure aimed at connecting buyers and sellers, like any other market.

So what are capital markets?

Capital markets help raise capital by connecting suppliers of funds to users. The users of funds can be anyone from individuals to companies and even governments looking o channel the wealth of savers for long-term, productive use. The suppliers can be households and the institutions serving them like pension funds, life insurance companies, hospitals, and religious institutions. ‘

Buyers and sellers can engage in the trading of bonds, stock, currencies, debt instruments, commodity futures, and any other form of financial security. Capital markets enable growth in an economy and allow entities to flourish be it individuals or businesses and hence, they are pivotal to any economic or financial system. Note that most capital markets are publicly available, some might be limited to large-scale institutional investors. The high-volume and sensitive nature of trade in capital markets take place in secured computer-based e-trading systems.

Capital markets are bifurcated into primary and secondary markets, the common ones being the stock market and the bond market. They aim to improve transactional efficiencies by bringing suppliers together with the ones seeking capital and providing a place where they can exchange securities.

Is the capital Market regulated?

Post Brexit reforms to capital market regulations are:
Changes will cut red tape and make the City of London an attractive investment place and make it optimal for the business. The UK will take full advantage of its newfound freedoms after leaving the EU. It is bringing reform to the rules for listing companies in the UK and the regulation of wholesale capital markets as well.

The reforms are aimed at giving the firm greater choice about where to trade and also giving companies a simpler and agile regime for companies listing and raising capital to encourage innovative firms to list in the UK and bring wider participation in the ownership of public companies. UK wholesale capital markets followed the EU’s MIFID rules since 2018 after being introduced to harmonized wholesale markets regulation across EU member states. The ability to float companies and raise capital in the UK was so far governed by EU prospectus regulation since 2017.

How is the capital market structured?

A company selling bonds or other securities for the first time will do so through the primary market, mostly in an initial public offering (IPO) form. Primary market companies usually hire investment bankers to help attract large investors to purchase securities since they need huge capital in a small period of time.

Small investors and individuals are usually unable to buy securities in the primary market at this time while in secondary markets, securities are traded between entities after a company has sold all bonds and securities on the primary markets. This includes all trading on stock markets; BSSE, NSE, New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), etc. small investors can buy and sell securities in the secondary market. Investors often hire the services of an intermediary to buy securities and bonds for them.

Are capital markets the same as stock markets?

The overall capital market includes the stock market and other venues where financial products are traded. Stock markets are where investors and banking institutions come together to do stock trading. Stocks can be traded privately or publicly, and aides in fundraising capital. Individuals and entities invest in stocks to get higher returns and companies use these investments to develop new products and services or continue maintenance.
Stock markets make up a considerable portion of the total volume of trade in capital markets.

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