03/23/2018
One of the most asked questions is about how to invest in the stock market. There are TONS of websites that offer their take on it. I don’t want to spend money so I just decided to jump in.
To minimize the risk, I started with an app called StockMaster. It gave me an option to try a “virtual” account with a starting balance of $10,000 in “play money”. I like the information it provides as well as the charts. I thought they were easy to read.
Then I started to get my feet wet with real money on an app called “stash”. The app lets you invest as little as $5. What’s different is that you invest in groups rather than just the company alone. I think this is smart to do while you are still learning how everything works. The downside is that it charges $1 every month after the first month.
Lastly, I tried an app called robinhood. This app let me buy fractions of stocks. This is a cool way to be able to buy popular stocks and not have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars. For example, I bought .1 shares of Exxon mobile for about $7. I’ve tried reading the charts and listening to what other people do.
My strategy is a bit different. I don’t care about how long it takes, I just want to maximize my profits. This is my plan. 1. Affordable. $20 or less
2. Positive slope in last year
3. Try to find it on a downward turn and a very low number compared to the 52 week average.
4. Be patient. Some people put a stop loss so that if they start losing money, they won’t lose too much. I know eventually it has to come back up, so I’m just going to leave all of them until they turn a profit.
5. Pick amount of profit. I usually say 10%. That’s very high, but I like it for me. So what I do the moment I see a stock go to the 10% area is that I’ll put a stop loss on a little bit under. The reason is if the stock keeps growing, I want to still be a part of it. It it stops growing and goes down, I at least made my percentage that I wanted.
I made a spreadsheet that shows how much I’ve invested and daily values. I’ll keep updating as I work on this weekly.
Any questions comments would be greatly appreciated.
