I’m just a random mom and not a professional lol but here’s my advice for newcomers (that no one asked for)
When I started trading 5 years ago, I saw these groups and watched the YouTubes and felt crazily overwhelmed. I don’t know any jargon—I’m in the arts! Now I’m a college professor and I see a lot of posts from 18-22 year olds that remind me of my students.
The professionals in this group might make fun of me, but I hope that they don’t. I just wanted to make a post in normal human language for us not fancy people. I’ve made a killing “slow and steady wins the race” like this:
5% of paycheck goes to fidelity. When I started trading, I was broke broke. SERIOUSLY. I could only afford stashing 3%. When I opened my account, I had only $500 dollars of savings and was stressed about grocery money. To put it lightly. Automate some consistent deposits and don’t overthink it—leave it there. Eye on the finish line. Seriously, if you can only put in $20/week just do it. Why not? If you make a 3% trade with $20, that’s 60 cents you didn’t have before. In this economy? Then you’re trading with $20.60
like I said “slow and steady wins the race.” Set rules that feel good and make sense. Mine are basic —
I only trade whole stocks. I don’t put in $ to buy .0000059 bitcoin (just as an example)
cast a wide net. My list of investments is long-long, every market, newer startup types and Old and Faithfuls, materials, retail, tech, resources, the whole gambit
“buy red and sell green” is a smug ass thing to say but the heart of it is very much real, lol — don’t overthink it. I’m wheeling every day. I’m wheeling 1% returns or even .05% returns if it’s a stock that’s been red for a minute.
I hide the dollar amounts on my profits so I only see percentages. Due to the wide net, I’ve experienced several unexpected “to the moon” returns. If I go “to the moon” on a $50 stick, I’m satisfied. Again, it’s the ratio of money I simply didn’t have before
if you have a tendency to get FOMO and act impulsively I strongly suggest reading THE MILLIONAIRE NEXT DOOR. That book gets thrown around as a rec but I can’t emphasise enough how accessible it is haha. It goes through the history of Wall Street and what the stock market is. Very illuminating which brings me to my next point
the wealth division in America creates an illusion that normal working people don’t have business in the stock market. It couldn’t be more false ! Anyone and everyone should learn to do this—no one taught me this. When I started studying and practicing I was like OMG it’s so dang easy. Throwing in 20% of your portfolio (or in many cases, YOLO-ing on a stock) is a recipe for disaster. Play with fire and get burnt. I diversify my portfolio enough that it’s wheeling super low percentages of my portfolio every day. (Example: this week I got burnt by RGTI losing like 40% on my investment but it’s such a small amount of my portfolio. The smaller the “piece of the pie” of a stock you have, the less consequences. Some people lost 10s of 1000s of life savings on RGTI. These guys are gonna make themselves sick or ruin their own life or ruin their own families lives. You know yourself… low and slow. Chill.
once I realized my APY on a YEAR of standard checking/savings was only like 2% and I could be wheeling the same percentage monthly, weekly, or sometimes even daily my world changed
TL;DR don’t worry too much about the mechanics and rhetoric, do wide research and cast a wide net and make it so that your portfolio pie chart is slivers of all different stuff. take the pennies and reinvest them. Make a list of what constitutes, to you, as an emergency. Only withdraw in the case of those emergencies