Career Advice: Stock Market and Investing 101

What is the stock market?

By definition it is a system that allows an aggregation of buyers and sellers to exchange and hold shares or “stock,” which represent ownership claims on businesses. These businesses are assets that either gain or lose value as it performs over time. As investors or “shareholders” of these companies, how your money is made in conjunction to the frequency it’s made, will reflect off of the companies progression (being positive or negative).

When it comes to investing every trader will have their own preference or style.

The most common types of trading one may come across will be: day trading, swing trading, growth investing and dividend investing. The first two will be considered short-term. Day trading will be buying/selling throughout the day with the goal of being profitable by market close. Swing trading will typically be held throughout weeks and occasionally up to months.

Growth and dividend investing will fall under the long-term category. When investing for growth you’re trusting the company’s fundamentals to remain stable. Stability will allow improvements and expansions to become fluent and regular for the front and back end of the business; ultimately increasing revenue for the company and your pockets. Dividend investing also falls under the long-term category because of how meticulous you must be when picking what goes in your portfolio, and the time it takes to build up revenue for consistent monthly and quarterly payments or “dividends.”

While fundamentally researching (studying the businesses front/back end seeking stability/growth) your long-term picks might be different than your short-term, the technical analysis (charting price action with levels) will stay rather the same. Websites like https://finance.yahoo.com/ and https://www.marketwatch.com/ make it easy to browse and research all public information about these companies; while apps like Tradingview and Think or Swim make charting price action possible. However it does require extreme discipline, skill, and risk management.

While some of this information may seem foreign or daunting there are tons of successful investors to help feed good information to the public. People on YouTube such as: Graham Stephan, Andrei Jikh and Max Maher give out consistent and detailed videos educating people upon this complex subject.

No matter what it is, nor the complexity, Know we all are capable of excellence.