I wish to start testing the stock market waters because I know being a young investor can be beneficial.
At this point, I'm only slightly familiar with 'volume', the three types of stocks (penny, growth, blue chip), and the two general methods of making money (dividends and stock prices rising).
But everything else — especially detailed researching is extremely foreign to me. I'm tempted to just take internet advice, but I know that is not the most secure way to decide where to place my money.
Yet besides reading opinion articles, I don't know which pieces of information about the company to search for, and furthermore, I have no idea about how to put these pieces of information together to form a comprehensive opinion about a stock.
Any tips about researching stocks — especially how company history etc– plays into the mix are welcome.
Thank you all in advance!
I hate to bring you the bad news but, it is very hard to SUCCESSFULLY research stocks by yourself. Unless you have a degree in finance; like I do. The best thing you can do is to invest your money in a DIVERSIFIED PORTFOLIO. Don't try to buy one stock because you've heard some news of it and it seemed interesting, or if the stock was recently upgraded by big name investment banking firms like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, or Bear Sterns.
The fact of the matter is that it is VERY RISKY to do that. You can lose a lot of money that way. It's too risky and not worth it. Imagine how you would feel if you invested $5000 in a stock and then it drops down to $2500 in a week.
Best thing to do is to build a portfolio of stocks (using several industries) which are diversified and carry a very low risk. There should be at least 14 stocks in your portfolio. Ideally, there should be 30, but not many people can have enough money to buy 30 different stocks.
However, if you really want to learn how to research stocks, then I suggest studying applied equity valuation methods such as the EP or the DCF models.