Simple stock trading/how to read

wealthy-gal · 2020-07-24T22:07:45+00:00

Trading in the stock market is a pretty good way to build up wealth. I recommend this book https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Book_of_Common_Sense_Investing by the founder of Vanguard. The tl;dr of it is that index funds are usually a safe and low-risk way to invest. Index funds/ETF’s are basically a fund that consists of a certain group of stocks. So basically, whoever runs that fund, has decided to invest in a bunch of companies with a certain criteria - this could mean the index is made of the S&P 500 like VOO, it could mean its made of tech stocks like QQQ, but basically it’s less risky cause even if one of the companies the index fund has invested in does badly, another might do well and it’ll all even out. When you buy an individual company share, you buy a share of that company. It all depends on how that one company performs, and that can be more volatile. Sometimes unexpected things happen and a stock can drop a lot - it could be a trade sanction like we are seeing against China, CEO scandal, situational issue like with cruise lines during COVID, etc. and things can go wrong.

I like to use Robinhood, so this is a micro-tutorial on that.

wealthy-gal · 2020-07-24T22:11:54+00:00

Next we can talk about how to ‘read’ the page above.

The avg cost is the average cost of what I paid for the shares.

I bought 72 shares at an average cost of $103.

Now, Disney has gone up to $117 per share. So I will get the difference, since now I have 72 shares and they’re worth more than I originally paid at $103.

Today’s return is exactly that - how much the stock went up or down and what it means for me

Total return is how much it went up or down since I bought it

The 52 week high/low is something you can use to gauge what’s going on with the stock - Disney was all the way up to $153 and all the way down to $79 in the last year. For an old company like Disney, this is helpful, but for a newly public company, this might not be as helpful cause it could just be pretty volatile

The open, high, and low are today’s opening price, the highest price it reached today, and the lowest price it dropped today

wealthy-gal · 2020-07-24T22:27:06+00:00

**Please feel free to ask me any questions. Please note that I’m NOT a financial advisor, please don’t take this as financial advice. I just want to support folks that are curious about trading and start a conversation that women are often excluded from!

wealthy-gal · 2020-07-24T22:14:37+00:00

On the next page, you can see a bunch of stuff about how to buy. All of the same options exist to sell, too, but I can’t figure out how to edit the original post to include that.

I could decide I only want to buy Disney again if it’s at $105. So I would set a limit order that is active for the next 90 days. If it never goes down to $105, the order will be cancelled.

You can also sell a stop loss. Markets have fluctuations and it’s not the end of the world if the price goes below what I paid, but let’s say, once the share goes below $100, I want to just cut my losses and sell the stock. I can set a stop loss for 90 days, so if things get too volatile, I can sell off shares automatically

wealthy-gal · 2020-07-24T22:24:04+00:00

If you’re buying individual company stock, it’s worth doing some research on the company. I almost bought Disney at a high cause there were gonna roll out Disney plus, and I thought they’d make money and the stock would go up. Thankfully I didn’t, cause then COVID happened, and they had to close their parks and their stock dropped a lot. Then I bought it on the low side, thinking that eventually the parks will open and Disney will pick up again. They’re an old company and have a diverse range of products/sales. However, right after I bought around $103, it went down a little and that was annoying. A few weeks later, it went up and has been doing pretty good. I’m gonna hang onto it for at least a year to avoid capital gains tax, which would mean that I’d have to pay taxes at my normal tax rate.

BeADecentHumanBeing · 2020-07-24T23:11:20+00:00

Thank you so much for sharing this with us! Trying to learn so this is really helpful :)

chateauduchat · 2020-07-24T23:13:11+00:00

Thank you for this! I’ve been looking into getting into stocks! 💕

Salt_Satisfaction · 2020-07-24T23:38:02+00:00

Wow this seems really well explained. Thank you for this.

thaiteabbys · 2020-07-25T00:05:13+00:00

Thank you !! You did an awesome job explaining it where it was simple and understandable. Please do more posts (if you like) op!! I would love to see more posts like this more in FDS.

My bus101 professor talked about stocks and we did a group assignment on stocks (super simple) but it was still confusing to me.

I really want to get into stocks but I don’t know about it enough. Are there any resources like books, websites, YouTube channels, or apps you recommend to further learn about stocks?

Also this sounds dumb but you do pay for stocks with your own money? And how do you receive the money?

slaynmantis · 2020-07-25T03:28:37+00:00

I've been using Sofi. I think robinhood is similar? But i like being able to buy fractional shares like you can in Sofi. I have an 'active account'- where you buy individual stocks on your own terms. (Its been an experiment for me and I'm not doing so well but hey, it's a learning experiment.)

I also created 2 'automated investment' accounts- a high aggressive risk account~ 80% index funds 20%bonds, and a medium conservative risk account ~60/40- the company uses some smart computer systems that buy and sells the trades for you. (With no fees). This was my first year ever starting an investment account and I already accrued 2k in gains! Lol .

It's sad that at 31 I'm saving money for the first time in my life, but watching my stocks grow has become really addicting.

Myplummms · 2020-07-25T00:06:44+00:00

Wow, thank you so much!!! You're a true queen!

Gambit12345 · 2020-07-25T04:17:20+00:00

Love to see this! It’s definitely not talked about enough, I know so few people who participate in stock trading. No one seems to really know what it is or how to do it but this is something I want to learn and participate in once I pay down more student debt.

staircaseinforests · 2020-07-25T00:03:32+00:00

Just to add, because of COVID, several free Investing courses have become free! https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/04/29/5-free-investing-courses-available-online.html

paperbagskirt · 2020-07-25T00:12:59+00:00

👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

naamshiko · 2020-07-25T00:25:56+00:00

Hi do you mind if I DM you with a few questions?

buttercup_010 · 2020-07-25T06:29:53+00:00

Thanks for sharing this, it is really helpful. This is an area that I’m really interested in learning about, but haven’t figured how to break into. I listened to Bogle’s book, but it seemed more theoretical to me so I’m still trying to figure out the steps to take.

If you or anyone else have any resources you recommend for a beginner wanting to delve into it and get started I’d love to hear about them! It’s so important for us to be financially independent.

needsmoresilk · 2020-07-25T12:50:13+00:00

Thank you! I used to invest in stocks and ETF, but fell into a depression, lost my job and burned thru my savings and investment dollars money to cover me. It took me 6 months to find a new job and I used up all my savings/investment funds. This was in 2016. I felt too burned out to start investing again. This post has given me strength. I signed up for acorns and sofi based on the advice in this thread. FDS turns lives around!!

willowgrowingroots · 2020-07-25T19:50:23+00:00

Thank you& I love your handle!

Title	Simple stock trading/how to read
Author	wealthy-gal
Upvotes	126
Comments	33
Date	July 24, 2020 9:55 PM UTC (6 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/FemaleDatingStrategy
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/comments/hxawig/simple_stock_tradinghow_to_read/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/simple-stock-tradinghow-to-read.719925 https://theredarchive.com/post/719925

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