[–] Rosenkavalier ago
Not a subverse, but I have been reading armstrongeconomics.com recently, and Martin Armstrong has a lot of compelling knowledge and clout in the money world.
[–] rwbj 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago (edited ago)
The educated opinion would be to not bother trying to personally beat the market. There are a lot of reasons for this but in general index funds (which are basically a blank investment across a wide array of major companies) tend to outperform any given individual. Buffet is now going into the 8th year of a 10 year million dollar wager he made with another individual. Previously mentioned individual got to pick out any group of hedge funds he liked. Buffet picked an index fund. Whoever was ahead after 10 years won. Here are the details. Here's an interesting writeup on it.
The index funds, as always, are stomping the hedge funds. And hedge funds are run by professional investors who are not infrequently busted engaging in insider trading and other such shenanigans. Yet they still can't beat the basic market. Play an investing simulator or whatever and you're basically just randomly gambling. It'll result in huge variance and if you end up on the positive side, which you will eventually, you'll think you're an investing genius when the reality is in today's market - nobody is.
Go with an index fund. It will be literally impossible to lose all your money, or even any major chunk of it, unless our economy completely flops in which case it will generally come back in short order as we artificially fill that bubble back up like after the 2009 recession through various economic games like quantitative easing or 'dumping tons of money into the economy and hoping things work out.' It's probably screwing our economy in the mid to long run, but it's basically viagra for stocks in the short run as when people have far more money than they know what to do with stocks are an easy option, and that creates artificial demand which artificially inflates the prices and makes all of our economic indicators look nice and pretty.
[–] RedditDead2005-2015 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago (edited ago)
If you don't think you'll have the time to read a "How To" book for the basics, there's plenty of Youtube vids with tutorials.
[–] RedditDead2005-2015 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
The best way to learn about the stock market is to start reading the financial news online or watching CNBC and other financial news shows on TV. If you don't have the time to follow them, then you shouldn't be trading stocks. You should just stick the money into a mutual fund.
First of all, which country are you in? In the U.S., there's places like E-Trade and other online discount brokerages. A 3% commission sounds too high even for a full service brokerage. Usually, people just getting into the stock market should stay away from individual stocks and stick with index stocks that follow a particular market index like DJIA, Nasdaq 100, S&P 500, etc.
The free stock monitoring sites usually show prices which are delayed 5 minutes so it's not that useful for trading. I don't have the bookmarks with me right now, but you can find places of Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg, CNBC, etc. for them. This place is also good for an market overview.
[–] 33degree 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
The market is insanely volatile right now and the bubble is jacked up to the gills. I would not get on right now. Wait until there's a huge drop and the buy Apple, amazon and hold for dear life. Day trading will get you smoked unless you have guidance from someone who does it for a living.
If you seriously want to pursue it, schedule an appointment with a financi adviser pick their brain. Don't take financial advice from Internet forums. Zerohedge and fool.com are pretty good sources for financial news
[–] Womb_Raider 1 point 2 points 3 points (+3|-1) ago
Try penny stocks, and only buy small amounts. They're higher risk, so they give you a better perspective of how easy it is to lose money in stocks. Then move on to larger, more stable stocks and see how you like it.
Take it slow or you will regret it, as I did. Damn you, NIKE stock! Damn you to hell!
For a novice investor, penny stocks is not the place to get started. It's an incredibly risky and volatile market where you can lose everything overnight (which rarely happens with stocks listed on the NYSE or Nasdaq). It's also incredibly difficult to do research on those companies, and scammers doing the pump-and-dump are all over the place...and it's usually the underwriters.
[–] Womb_Raider ago
I only advise it so that he gets to experience losing without actually losing a significant sum of money. He'll learn caution with stocks which I think is paramount
[–] PraiseIPU 0 points 4 points 4 points (+4|-0) ago
Word of warning to penny stocks. Some trading companies will tack on an extra fee for any stock worth less than $1. On top of the usual $4-$7 per trade fee.
This can pay off like in the case of Fanny Mae/Freddy Mac which were trading below $0.20/share at the bottom and spiked to $5/share at one point. But these cases are extremely rare.
[–] RedditIsPropaganda23 ago (edited ago)
relevant: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-32246655
Very important to look for low fees. Buy and hold.