How to Start Investing in a Brokerage
DISCLOSURE: I AM NOT A FINANCIAL ADVISOR
Why am I Writing this?
There are so many times I've watched people say, yeah you should invest your money. Or you should buy X stock instead of Y stock. But how do you get started with investing in the first place?
That was the question I've wondered for so long in high school. Back then, I've heard so many people talk about buying stocks and crypto and stuff but there were very few step-by-step tutorials that went through how it all actually worked.
I started investing since my first internship 4 years ago and since then so many of my friends I wanted a simple guide to consolidate everything I've learned over the years in one place (mostly for myself but also for friends whenever they ask me for advice and I can look back). I love sharing information with the world and investing has definitely given me that cushion of mind over the last few years.
In terms of my gains (which I'm obviously not going to post the exact numbers here), it's more than doubled my overall net worth by literally just moving money from one account to another and investing in stable long-term securities which have been proven (ex. S&P 500).
And also...
Background Info + Terms
With anything finance-wise, there's also a bunch of boring terms that you need to learn first. I remember when I first started, I was like wtf are all these random symbols and numbers. Over time it started to make sense for me but it was definitely overwhelming at first.
Terms
- Shares = A unit of a company. When someone mentions buying 1 share of a company, it means that they are buying 1 unit of a company. So when you buy 1 share of a company, you own 1 unit of that company. When you search up a company's name + stock price (ex. Apple stock price), the listing on Google will be the share price.
- Splitting =
- Security = Any tradeable assets
- DCA = Dollar Cost Average
- Individual Stocks
- Index Funds
- ETFs
- Mutual Funds
- Taxable Brokerage
- HYSA
- HSA
- 401k
- Roth IRA
- 529
Individual Stocks vs ETFs
How do you actually invest in a stock? Through a brokerage!
A brokerage is the middleman that allows you to buy assets and securities like stocks and bonds. Unlike a traditional bank, they don't typically have in-person locations and
That's too much work, how can I automate all of this?
Fidelity has an option where you can automatically invest your money in a security by default.
References
https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/index/
https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/events/virtual-classrooms
https://stockanalysis.com/etf/compare/schg-vs-qqq-vs-spy-vs-voo/?r=ALL