Time to wrap up everything I’ve said about investing in the last 3 months. Don’t worry, this isn’t my last investing post but it is the last basic investing post. I’ll review everything I’ve taught you, so get ready for a looooooong post. Seriously, get comfortable because you’ll be here a while.

Let’s start with my first (technically second) investing post, What is a Stock?

Basically a stock is a very small part of a company. If you own a stock you actually own part of a company. Yes, that means that you can actually own your favourite companies!!! Below is the video I posted on my What is a Stock post.

February 12, Who is Dow Jones? What is the Nasdaq?

The Dow Jones, the Nasdaq, the S&P 500 and so many others are called indices. Indices are an easy way of tracking how the overall stock market is doing. If the Dow Jones goes up, you could estimate that most stocks on the stock market will go up too. Almost all indices work differently so most people have a preference and use only the one they like the best.

February 13, What is a Ticker Symbol?

To explain it simply, a ticker symbol is an easy way to find information on a companies stock. Ticker symbols are usually 1-5 letters long and to use it just go to a website like Yahoo! Finance and type it in to find all the stock information you could ever want.  Some famous Ticker Symbols include AAPL (Apple), GOOG (Google), and MSFT (Microsoft).

February 14, Trading Time

As you hopefully remember, you can only trade stocks at a certain time on certain days. I personally think it’s annoying but it does have it’s benefits. This time is from 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM in New York, so you may have to adjust for your time zone. You’re also only allowed to trade stocks on weekdays, which means no trading on weekends or holidays. 😦

February 15, Stock Brokers

Stock Brokers are the people that make buying stocks possible. There are both online stock brokers and stock brokers who are real people. I would recommend buying stocks from an online stock broker as they are much cheaper and quicker than real life stock brokers although real life stock brokers can provide important knowledge that online ones cannot.

February 17, Bears and Bulls 

Bears and Bulls are probably the weirdest stock market terms that exist. A bull market is good, it means that, on average, the market is trading up. A bear market is the exact opposite. If it’s a bear market than the market is trading down on average.

February 19, Dividends?!

Dividends are a companies way of saying thank-you for being a shareholder. Basically as a dividend you get a few cents per stock per year (or 3 months, depending on the company). Not all companies offer Dividends, but they are a great reward for being a shareholder.

February 21, Blue Chip Stocks

Blue Chip companies are the big brands in the world. They are probably the safest investments there are and although they won’t go up as fast as some lesser known companies do, there is a very high chance that they will go up over time.

February 21, Stock Splits

Stock Splits are a strategy by businesses to make it easier for everyone to buy stocks. If a stock split happens than the amount of stocks everyone has will double but the value of the stocks will halve. By doing this people can afford more stocks and people with lower budgets can buy them more easily.

February 22, Private Vs. Public

Some companies sell stocks while others don’t. A company that choses to sell stocks is called a public company while a company that choses not to sell stocks is private. Subway is very famous for not being publicly traded.

February 22, Comic Relief

Remember this?

February 23, The Foundations of a Great Company – Coca-Cola

February 28, Shares Outstanding

Shares outstanding is a simple stock market term used to determine the amount of shares in a company are on the market. You can use this to calculate how much of a company one share is worth. So if a company has 100 shares outsanding, 100 shares is worth 100% of the company while 1 share is worth 1% of the company. If you don’t understand, read the entire post by clicking on the link above.

February 28, The Stock Market in the Past Five days?

February 28, Market Cap.

March 5, Getting to Know Your Quarterly Report

A quarterly report is a report that all business in the U.S. and Canada are required to publish every 3 months. It outlines almost every business activity that happened in the past 3 months and is very important information when considering investing.

March 12, Foundations of a Great Company – Mattel

March 15, Long Term Vs. Short Term

To explain it simply a short term investment is an investment that is intended to only last a short period of time. A long term investment is an investment that is intended to last a long period of time. Long term investments are safer but they require a lot of time. Short term investments don’t guarantee profit but they only last a short period of time. Both are important to learn about when investing.

March 18, Stock Market Simulators

March 21, Volume

Volume refers to the amount of stocks exchanged in a single day. So if the volume is 1 000 000 the amount of stocks bought/sold in that day was 1 000 000.

March 23, Diversify Your Portfolio 

Diversifying your portfolio is a simple way to ensure you don’t lose money. By buying stocks from several different companies you save yourself if one of your stocks goes way, way down.

March 28, Apple

March 30, The News, Your New Best-Friend (Sort of)

Using the news is a simple way to find new companies to invest in and decide when to sell.

Whew! That’s a lot I just covered! I’ve decided to publish the second part of this post later so stay tuned for that.

That’s all for now, Ben