Money. It’s what drives people to achieve more, reach higher and fight for what they deserve. It fuels our society and yet, causes immeasurable heartache if you don’t have any. What does it take to get money? Investing is one avenue you can take to gain profits, but only if you know what it takes to do it right, so read on.
If you want part of your portfolio to stay ahead of inflation, general stocks are your prime opportunity. Over the last six decades, annual stock returns have average ten percent. That has been well ahead of bond yields and real estate earnings. A balanced stock portfolio across the market is historically the best proposition for growing wealth, whereas handpicking stocks or sectors might not generate this result.
When considering company stocks to invest in, consider any past negative surprises. Similar to the idea that one pest is typically indicative of more pests in your home, one blemish on the company record typically indicates more in the future. Choose businesses with the best reputations to avoid losing money on your stocks.
Investing should not be considered a hobby. It’s a very competitive business, so you should treat it as such. You must understand your own profit and loss as well as those companies making those investments. Keeping this in mind can make the thought process and strategy creation for investing much easier.
If you’re confident doing investment research on your own, try using an online brokerage. The trade fees and commissions of online brokers where you do all the work yourself are cheaper than both full service and discount brokers. If you aim to make a profit, you want to consider the cheapest way to operate your buying and selling technique.
Never overly invest in the company that you work for. Owning stock in your employer can be risky. If something negative happens to your employer, both the value of your portfolio and your paycheck could be threatened. However, if employees can buy company shares at a nice discount, it can be worth investing some of your money in the company.
A general tip that all beginners should use is to avoid buying stocks that cost less than $15 per share. When starting out, you generally don’t want to invest in companies that aren’t leading their field and those companies that are, are most definitely going to cost much more than $15 a share.
Rebalance your portfolio quarterly. If you started with an 80/20 mix of stocks and bonds, the stocks will likely outpace the bonds, leaving you 90/10. Rebalance to 80/20 so that you can reinvest your stock earnings into bonds. This way you keep more of your earnings over the long run. Also rebalance among stock sectors, so that growing sectors can fuel buying opportunities in bear cycle industries.
If you are nearing retirement or your investment goal, then your stock picks should be more conservative than average. Large cap stocks, dividend stocks, blue chips and any company with low or no risk of capital depreciation are all good choices. This is also a good time to start shifting out of the stock market and into bonds or other fixed income assets.
An early decision you must make is how you want to access to the stock market. If you want to be a passive trader and leave the management to an industry professional, mutual funds are good options that provide automatic portfolio diversficiation. If you are more of a do-it-yourselfer, then picking and trading your own stocks is possible too. Splitting your investment between both is a choice that some do as well.
Hold your stocks as long as you can, from a minimum of five years to maybe eternity. Do not sell when the markets have been rough for a day or even a year. Also do not sell if your stock has doubled or tripled. As long as your reasons for holding that stock are still good, then keep holding it. Reinvest any earnings you do not need in the next five years. Sell only if the stock goes so high that the business is just maxed out and not going to grow anymore.
It takes money to make money. You need income from somewhere other than the stock market in order to have money to invest in the stock market. Even that should not start until you have six or twelve months of money outside the market. Once you do get into the market, do not live off your returns. Reinvest them to harness the power of compounding.
Whatever your original investment portfolio size might be, and no matter how large your end goals are, you can do it. The insight you now have, after reading this article, hopefully, has given you the power to take your financial future into your own hands and mold it into everything that you have dreamed of. Now all you have to do is to just do it!
