How do I start investing?
Updated: Aug 10, 2021
It's easy as 1, 2, 3 Here is how to get started!
There are many brokers that you can utilize to start your investing journey. You'll want to compare each and identify which works for your situation.
Selecting a Broker
If you just want to start investing with as little as $5 and start right away with commission free trading download the Robinhood app.
The Robinhood app is the best way to start your investing journey. You simply download to your mobile phone, complete the signup and fund your account. The best part of Robinhood is that you don't have to pay for a buy or sell trade like most other brokers with fancier tools. As you determine you want fancier tools for your investing journey you can then research other brokers and all the great knick knacks they have such as enhanced technical or fundamental analysis tools.
Check out Bankrate’s top picks for best online brokers for stocks in 2019:
Fidelity – Best for investing research
TD Ameritrade – Best for beginners
Charles Schwab – Best for low fees
Robinhood – Best for digital user experience
E-Trade – Best for ongoing education
Ally – Best for cheap trades
Best Sites For Stock Research
There are additional sites such as the ones listed below where you can conduct your enhance technical and fundamental research without singing up for a broker and pay commissions for those tools. Here are a few my friends and I use:
Below you'll find the step by step process on how to invest and remember you don't have to go it alone we have FREE help and live assistance at no charge to you for the first session.
Now if you need additional education there is a reasonable charge or we just ask for a donation right now, and that of course is to pay our financial advocates and continue to develop resources and tools to help others like you!
Decide How Many Shares To Buy
If you are just getting started we cover FinTech companies at the end of this article where you can start investing for as little as $5. Start small investing in companies that produce the brands you buy. For example do you like Moet or Hennessey Spirits?
Well you're in luck! LouisVuittonHenneseyMoet is a company LVMH that you can purchase via your broker. You'd be surprised by how many companies we patronize on a daily basis that you can invest in. Some of these range from Target (TGT), Home Depot (HD), McDonalds (MCD), Walmart (WMT), Twitter (TWTR), Facebook (FB)and many, many more!
Start with 5 companies and purchase 2 shares of each, if you can't purchase 2 shares of each just invest with what you can such as $5. This is called fractional investing. If a stock is $10 and you invest $5, you will own a fraction or 0.5 shares of that specific stock in this example. Once you feel comfortable and you like the performance of the stock, invest at 5 or 10 shares at a time.
Choose Your Order Type
While researching a stock, as discussed above you will enter the stocks symbol. You will then select Buy or Sell, Select the Share Amount, and then You will be presented with Order Type. What is this? Well it's fairly simple and if you want to get a stock at a good price you'll want to pay particular attention here. For Long Term traders you would be fine with the default option which is a market order.
To Understand Order Types Click Here for a brief video that will cover:
Market Orders
Indicates you want your order filled immendiately at the next availalbe price. More concerned with speed of trade than the price. Has the best chance of being filled, but will be filled at a different price depening on how active the market is when trading the security
Stop Orders
A triggered market order at an activiation price. If a stock falls to a specific price or lower the stock can automatically be sold to limit losses. If a stock falls quickly the order may not trigger if the stock price jumps over your set price.
If you have a stock that is performing well, you can set a stop order to trail the gains the stock has provided. If a stock you bought is $5 and it rises to $10 and keeps going to $18, you can place a stop order so that if the stock falls back $3 or 16.67% your stock will automatically be sold.
Limit Orders
You can specify a price that you wish a stock to be filled at. Usually when an investor has a targeted entry or exit price you could place a limit order. These could or could not be filled if the stock does not hit the specified price
Welcome to The World of Investing! You are Now an Official Investor!
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Other great tools that the team here utilizes is Mint.com for budgeting, tracking your expense and income, and your credit score. The great thing about Mint is that it provides recommendations after analyzing your accounts on what would be best for your situation. Now some of these are sponsored links on their site or partner offers so decide for yourself if it's worth it to open that new credit card, or shop around for better auto insurance.
Another Great Tool
Is Acorns! You can use acorns to round up your purchases and invest the spare change. Here is how it works. Say you went to purchase coffee and the price was $5.50. Acorns will round up your coffee purchase to $6.00 and invest the $0.50 in appreciating assets mainly equities or stocks. They also have an automatic account withdrawal, I let them withdraw $10 a week from my personal account and they invest in the investment of your choice depending if you are a conservative, moderate, or (growth) aggressive investor.
Please share this blog and if there is anything you'd like me to investigate I will put my own funds in and let you know my honest opinion if it's a great broker, app, or investment opportunity.
“It's not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for.” — Robert Kiyosaki