A lot of Redditors hate the Reddit IPO | Reddit warned us that its users were a risk factor, and boy do they sound excited about shorting its stock.::Reddit seems like a likely candidate for a meme stock. But the actual reaction suggests that r/WallStreetBets isn’t going to send the stock to the moon.
Theres a lot of smart financially minded people in these comments. any advice for how someone can get started with the market, and investments in general?
If you want to look at investments, DO NOT buy individual stock. DO NOT short stocks. These are gambles that people play, where you try to guesstimate what the general market thinks about future prospects of a company. Many stocks that over-perform, do not do so because the company is doing well, they over-perform because a large percentage of investors think it might do well in the near future.
Step 1 is just building a stable budget for your household. Pay off debts, earn more than you spend, build an emergency fund. Many companies have savings accounts that you can safely put money into that you can pull out at a moments notice without taking a loss because of a dip in the economy. There’s no reason to look at anything else if you have large amounts of student loans, credit card debt, or car payments you’re working off.
Step 2 is decide what you want to save for - retirement, a home, etc.
Step 3 is start investing towards that goal. Use investment portfolios that match what your Step 2 goal is.
Step 4 - What country are you from? Because the following advice is for Americans:
If you want to actually earn money, you do it slow and steady. Invest in whole market funds, like VTSAX or similar. They are called “whole market index funds” where you invest a small amount of money into an index fund and it grows along with the entire market. You would put money into a 401k, IRA, or other tax advantaged account, and put that money into a whole market index fund.
IF you have thousands of dollars that you are willing to just throw away and it doesn’t matter to you, THEN you can start buying stocks like Reddit, TSLA, or whatever. But that money shouldn’t be considered an investment.
Don’t try to overthink the market. If you are wanting to invest with no plans to spend that money within say 3 to 5 years, just by low expense ratio S&P500 tracking ETFs. My goal isn’t to beat the market, just ride with the market benchmarks as best as possible.
Yup. Nobody consistently does. If there exists some secret sauce to beating the market you’re certainly not going to find it on lemmy. Buy index funds and forget about them.
Tbh it’s not very hard, just get a brokerage account with someone like fidelity or even Robinhood. As far as picking stock, there’s no correct way that’s applicable to everyone. Oftentimes people who obsess over crunching numbers and doing lots of research, will rarely make more than if they just bought index funds.
Long-term investments are a lot more about how much and how long you can invest, vs what you invest in. In general, I tend to buy stock in companies who I believe to be undervalued, particularly if it’s been devalued in reaction to the media and not something like a bad quarterly.
I’m pretty sure like 95% of people who are paid to beat the market perform worse than index funds over any period greater than 5 years. I’m procrastinating at work so I’m going to be one of those annoying people that tell you to go research it yourself, but ya. From everything I’ve heard essentially nobody beats the market over long periods of time, it’s a losing battle. Just buy index funds and wait.
It’s boring but it’s the smartest thing to do.
Not too crazy to imagine, especially with how the markets have been behaving recently. Index funds have been having crazy returns the last year or so.
For example Boeing. But if you get a brokerage account and they recommend stuff but they are your age or younger, you should definitely listen with a grain of salt. I lost a good 5 years of income listening to the guy from fidelity. “It’s definitely time to invest!” In my head I was like ‘no way’. But they got my wife to convince me. And sure enough the money was gone in Just a few short months. But then we started to do our own investigation to see if theirs matched ours. Don’t do your own research thinking you’ll beat them, do it to get educated in your investments and to compare…if they seem to be way off, it could be either a great opportunity they know about and you don’t (insider trading lol) or it’s probably pure bullshit. I would say most of time it’s bullshit. How to they make money? Off your losses! Indirectly ofcourse, otherwise it would be robbery.
Yeah, never give anyone the ability to completely manage your brokerage account. Most investment brokers are just gambling addicts that get to spend other people’s money. If they are telling you they can get you returns much greater than index funds or a decent ETF…they aren’t telling you of the potential risk.
My advise to younger people is just to take advantage of any tax mitigation like a IRA or 401k, invest in index funds, and most importantly …don’t look at it too much.
People tend to panic when they see a long term investment dip below their original purchasing price, but it’s important to realize that losses aren’t realized until you sell. The market will fluctuate, but the likelihood of a company recovering at some point in the next 20 years is pretty high. Just be patient and don’t buy overspeculated stock.
Do you have retirement funds set aside an invested? If not, setting up or managing your own retirement account could be a good primer.
My advice is to read the simple path to wealth. I listened to the audiobook, its short and sweet and entertaining.
The gist: Nobody consistently beats the stock market (not even the people being paid to do so), don’t try, it’s gambling. Buy index ETFs when you have extra and hold on to them until you retire. Don’t time the market, dont overthink it. Buy and forget. There’s a part of the book where he says that the best group of investors were dead people and the second best were people who forgot about their investments. Idk if it’s true but it stuck with me.
Spend a few hours learning about tax differed savings accounts or whatever your country offers and take advantage of them.
In my experience, being investing intelligently is really fucking easy and really fucking boring.
Add a bit about moving from stocks to bonds as you approach retirement to top off your advice.
Also, pay off debt before you invest.
Set up Robin Hood or Acorns and drop like $100 a month into random stocks. NVIDIA is doing really well because of AI and is growing in leaps.
In my opinion you are describing gambling not investing.
So people shouldn’t get into low-stakes investment for some reason? Do you think that most poeple in the US have the money to do higher-level investment?
Low risk, not low stakes. Choose index trackers, not individual stocks.