Quite often, when we hear people discussing the stock market, the terms investing and trading are commonly used to describe the method by which we are attempting to profit from the financial market or markets. To many, these words are often used interchangeably as a means to describe seeking profits through market participation. However, in truth, they describe methods that are quite different from one another – despite the fact that both investors and traders could be buying and selling the same exact stocks or assets.

in the simplest of terms, investors are those that are seeking larger, long term returns, over an extended period of time. Their strategy is usually more so dictated by holding onto said stocks or assets, allowing it to increase as time goes on, and selling it as a much higher return later on in the future. However, traders are more so those who take advantage of volatility within the market, and look for rising and falling prices – entering and exiting their positions over a much shorter timeframe, so that while their profits are generally smaller, they are able to take advantage of volume by making far more frequent entries and exits.

What to Know About Investing?
When it comes to investing, investors are far more geared towards accruing their wealth over a long, extended period of time, by buying and holding their positions within the stock market or whatever other vehicles they might have in their portfolio. Often, these investors are holding some of these positions for years at a time, slowing adding to their position size every so often. This also allows them to take advantage of certain aspects like quarterly dividends, accrued interest, and changes that might occur within companies over the years.

Undoubtedly there will be fluctuations in the market, with up and down trends, but generally a savvy investor will pick the right investments, knowing when they can and should simply ride out the down periods, expecting that a rebound will soon be coming. Traditionally the stock market is essentially rising year over year, and they take long enough positions that they hope to recover their losses. An investor is usually a lot more careful than a trader, and is somewhat more conservative, as they are more concerned by fundamental market investment principles, than just what seems to be trendy at the moment. Someone like Warren Buffet comes to mind when you think of such principles.

Many of us are investors and may not even know it. Anyone with an IRA or 401(k), through their company is technically an investor, whether they are checking their prospectus or not. These retirement accounts are meant to grow over the course of decades and throughout your working career. These types of accounts are more so about long term, consistent growth than day to day booms and busts.

What to Know About Trading?
Traders, and trading in general is more so concerned with a series of frequent transactions, buying and selling of stock and different types of assets or commodities, over and over to accrue larger gains. Generally, traders are looking to secure higher gains than the average investor. While an investor might look to grow their portfolio as a supplement, by 10% for the whole year, a trader might be trying to earn 10% every single month. While both are usually keeping by the old adage “buy low, sell high”, a trader is also looking to “sell short”, by betting against a certain stock, assuming it may go down and buying to cover at a lower price. Regardless of either method, the trader is still looking to hold positions for an extremely short time, as short as possible – with some positions being held for under a minute if they can make it happen fast enough.

Considering the volatility that is involved in trading, traders often use a protective stop-loss order that allows them to automatically close out a losing position at a number of their choosing, this allows them to mitigate their risk and prevent taking losses that are too large, waiting and hoping for them to rebound when they could simply just put that into other places and make more trades. To be a successful trader, you will often require the use of software and technical analysis tools, to help in reading charts, and understand a number of principles of when you should enter and when you should exit a trade. There are also a few different types of traders, depending on the timeframe they hold a position, position size, and often just the way the market has been behaving for that period of time, traders tend to change their strategies to one of the following:

• Position Trader: Holds positions for months at a time, even over a year if they must.
• Swing Trader: This is quite popular in today’s world, as they hold positions for days or weeks hopping on trends. Sometimes even called a trend trader.
• Day Trader: The most common term of trader, holds positions through the day, with many only last minutes to hours without any overnight positions.
• Scalp Trader: Scalping is simply a method of holding positions for only seconds or a few minutes, often taking advantage of market volatility to earn a few cents on each trade.

Whether its on TV or on the internet, watching someone buy stocks can often seem quite difficult and confusing. For the most part, these outlets will try to glamorize the process, and make it seem like something reserved for the world best hackers, as they sit in front of a PC with 3 monitors, all showing you confusing charts and a series of terms you simply don’t understand. While this might be your setup as you move forward, and become a confident, semi-professional trader, in the beginning you can get started simply with your laptop or smartphone, and the right resources and education.

At Stockia, we are here to help educate everyone from beginners to intermediate traders – walking you through the initial basics and fundamentals, and providing you with the foundation you need to build upon and become a confident, educated trader who is comfortable navigating the market on your own. In this article, we will provide you with a step-by-step guide to buying stocks, from the technical aspect of actually filling orders, to how you can go about doing research and acquiring knowledge you need to make educated trades that can lead to short- and long-term profitability!

Here are a few vital steps to take, when buying your first stock.

• 1. Choose Your Online Broker
  In years past, the vast majority of traders were forced to purchase stocks through an actual, physical stockbroker. And while these individuals did and still do offer a valuable service, with advice and guidance, they charge much fairly high commissions, and were mostly necessary when information wasn’t as readily available as it is today – with the internet, of course. Online brokers nowadays offer us the ability to make trades, and purchase stocks on our own, from the comfort of our homes and right there on our smartphones. Plus, many of these brokerages, such as Robinhood or Webull, no longer charge commissions, and the ones that do, are nominal and generally offer additional services that are more than worth the fractions of a cent per share they usually charge.
  Setting up an online brokerage account is quite easy, and is as simple as setting up an email address, just with a bit more personal information such as your SSN, address, tax info, and more. Once you complete your setup, and have attached a funding source, such as your bank account, you simply add funds to trade with, and you can soon get started.
• 2.Do Your Homework
  Sure, setting up your account, adding money, and purchasing stock is pretty easy for anyone who is computer literate – but one of the most important steps in the process is for individuals to do their research, and create a plan to decide which stocks they would like to buy. Using a service suck as Stockia.io’s subscription stock picks can provide you with a number of amazing stocks to choose from, with one of the highest success rates in the business, however its still important to be able to do the research on your own and choose your own stocks – especially if you would like to be a confident, well-rounded trader soon.
  One good strategy to start with is by looking up companies you might be familiar with, such as electronics and technology you own and have an interest in or the appliances you tend to use. The pharmaceuticals you might take, the gym you go to, the types of clothes you wear, and much more. As a consumer, you know a decent amount about a product, the quality of it, if its overpriced, and a lot more. For instance, an avid gamer, who might research the release date of a heavily anticipated game, might choose to invest in the stock of the manufacturer or makers of the game, before the release anticipating they will make quite a bit of money from pre-orders, as well as the overall “hype” surrounding the. And while things like technical analysis and chart reading are certainly important skills for traders to learn, try not to both yourself with this too much in the beginning, as it requires several weeks, months, or even years to master those types of skill. One good way of thinking, that renowned investor and trader (likely the most successful ever!), Warren Buffet often preaches is to buy into companies with solid fundamentals, that you would want to become an owner of, rather than just because you think the stock will go up. This is a good ideology, as numbers can change, and you can profit off small blips and bumps in the market, but these moments take a lot of skills and technical knowledge to predict. During your early days of trading and investing, its best to look at the overall picture and read as much as you can about things such as their quarterly earnings, conference calls to shareholders, any deals they’ve recently been a part of, government interactions, and the news overall.
• 3.Choose How Many Shares to Buy
  The fact is that when you are choosing the number of shares to purchase, it is completely up to you, and you should never feel that you have to buy any more or any less, just because you read something online in the news. For beginners, its best to start out small, and slowly build up to more and more shares, over time, as you become more comfortable. Your goal is to turn a profit, but it is also to avoid taking a loss, and mitigating losses as best you can. Also, an important thing this teaches you is the ability to put your emotions aside, and ride out the bad times, in hopes of better times ahead.
  In addition, an interesting concept that many newer brokerages offer is the ability to purchase fractional shares. Allowing you to buy much larger stocks such as Amazon or Google, of which you might not be able to afford a full share, but can easily buy ¼ or a ½ a share. Make sure you buy a number of shares that you can afford and don’t mind being without this money for a period of time.
• 4. What Type of Order?
  When you are purchasing stocks, there are a series of different orders you must choose from when attempting to fulfill your orders. There are a number of different terms you must familiarize yourself with, here are some of the most important and most common to learn when trading stocks.
  Market Order: This is a common type of order when purchasing or selling stocks. It means that you would like to execute the trade as soon as possible, and at the best available price the market currently offers for that stock.
  Limit Order: Another common term, and type of order when purchasing or selling stocks. This means that you would like to execute the trade at a specific price point, and only at that price point.
  Stop or Stop-Loss Order: This is a type of order where a trader essentially has set the system to execute a market order at a specific price, or the “stop price”.
  Stop Limit Order: Similar to a stop loss, however when a stop price is met, the trade becomes a limit order and the order gets filled up to the moment at which the specific price limits are met.
  Ask: This is for Buyers, the price sellers are willing to accept for the purchase of the stock.
  Bid: This is for Sellers, the price buyers are willing to accept for the purchase of the stock.
  Spread: The difference between the high bid and the lowest asking price.
  You can learn more about these types of orders within out other articles, as they will delve deeper into the specific nature of each.
• 5. Diversify and Organize Your Portfolio
  From the moment of your first purchase within the market, if you take the right steps, and acquire the right education – while staying away from the scammers, and the “gurus” with ideas that sound way too good to be true, you can slowly achieve long term success, and earn a lot of money through the stock market. One of the most important things you need to learn however, is to diversify your portfolio and keep a smart perspective about things – at times certain sectors in the market will be up while others will be down, if you have stocks that are within all sectors, than you will be able to balance your gains and losses and put money into the areas that are up when needed, and this allows you to ride out the downtrends. This is vital, as it allows you to remain profitable at all times. These types of skills will grow with time, as you learn to grow and expand into other areas and take larger and larger positions.

For more knowledge on becoming a savvy trader or investor, be sure to checkout more of Stockia.io’s Education resources.

In today’s world of almost constant uncertainty, its truly difficult to know how things will be from one day to the next. In 2020, the world has been in the midst of one of the single worst pandemics in the history of mankind. Never before have we seen such widespread confusion, with no one truly knowing if there’s an end in sight. From, of all things, toilet paper becoming one of the hottest commodities, disappearing from shelves everywhere, to healthy individuals here one minute, and gone the next. Businesses of all types have been forced to shutter their doors, many on the brink of bankruptcy, and America seeing record highs in unemployment, with nearly 20 million individuals having applied for benefits over the last handful of months. With so many people out of work, the government has done what they can to keep things going, but now more than ever have we seen the value of financial freedom, and finding an alternative source of income. While the industrious ones have taken to sewing their own masks, starting e-commerce stores online, and drop-shipping as much hand sanitizer as humanly possible – others have taken to the stock market.

The fact is that the stock market has given many individuals the opportunity to stabilize their home lives and cover their family’s needs, while out of work, or having their hours cut. Those with the knowledge and the skill to trade and invest soundly have been able to take advantage of the hours of being stuck in the house, many even being able to surpass their previous income, and essentially starting a new, more self-reliant life as a day trader or investor.

The world is truly changing, and as individuals and companies have been forced to stare an uncertain future, directly in the mirror, their outlook on things has changed quite a bit. More and more businesses will be stripping down the excess waste, and looking to run their operations leaner and meaner than ever before. With so many individuals working from home and in most cases being able to match their former productivity, some of the largest companies in the world are deciding to go let their leases run out, and have the bulk of their team work remotely. Ironically enough, Zoom has made itself not only the most widely used video conferencing app, but also probably one of the best performing stocks this year! So its time to decide if you are going to let the uncertainty of the future take you down, or roll with the punches and take control of your financial life! With Stockia, you can not only expect one of the best subscription stock picking services around, but you can also learn a number of basic and advanced stock market strategies. Teaching you everything, from how to make your first trade, to reading charts like a seasoned trader. Join Stockia.io Today!