>Q: Which publicly traded, cash positive, companies have recently posted annual profits on their 10k?

I just asked Bard your question and the answer was this:

Here are some publicly traded, cash positive, companies that have recently posted annual profits on their 10k:

Apple (AAPL)

Amazon (AMZN)

Alphabet (GOOGL)

Microsoft (MSFT)

Tesla (TSLA)

Meta Platforms (META)

Nvidia (NVDA)

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A)

JPMorgan Chase (JPM)

Bank of America (BAC)

Citigroup (C)

Goldman Sachs (GS)

Morgan Stanley (MS)

UnitedHealth Group (UNH)

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)

Pfizer (PFE)

Merck & Co. (MRK)

Eli Lilly and Company (LLY)

AbbVie (ABBV)

Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY)

Amgen (AMGN)

Moderna (MRNA)

Novavax (NVAX)

BioNTech (BNTX)

Gilead Sciences (GILD)

Roche Holding (RHHBY)

Sanofi (SNY)

AstraZeneca (AZN)

Novartis (NVS)

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)

Pfizer (PFE)

Merck & Co. (MRK)

Eli Lilly and Company (LLY)

AbbVie (ABBV)

Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY)

Amgen (AMGN)

Moderna (MRNA)

Novavax (NVAX)

BioNTech (BNTX)

Gilead Sciences (GILD)

Roche Holding (RHHBY)

Sanofi (SNY)

AstraZeneca (AZN)

Novartis (NVS)

Please note that this is not a comprehensive list, and there may be other companies that meet the criteria.

its funny but u wonder how these analysts feels on days like this

> GLJ keeps $67 target on Tesla, says delivery disclosure raises risk

> TSLA GLJ Research analyst Gordon Johnson keeps a Sell rating on Tesla with a $67 price target after the company's Q1 deliveries fell short of consensus expectations. For the first time since Q1 of 2017, Tesla removed the following language from its delivery disclosure: "We only count a car as delivered if it is transferred to the customer and all paperwork is correct," Johnson tells investors in a research note. "This begs the question, including the language TSLA took out of the Q1 delivery report, would the numbers have been lower than the 310K reported," asks Johnson. The analyst sees risk that Tesla's "apple-to-apples" quarter-over-quarter delivery comparison is worse than what was reported this weekend.

> Don’t miss the forest for the trees Let’s take a look at what happened this week:

> Pfizer could be able to deliver 200 million more doses of its vaccine to the United States months earlier than expected. Johnson & Johnson should report results of their phase three trial next week; their CEO has broadcasted optimism about the results. New COVID case counts and hospitalizations are falling sharply in the United States, and there are early results suggesting that vaccines are already making a difference. The largest companies in the world have been reporting stellar earnings results. Apple had its most profitable quarter in history, Microsoft and Facebook posted record revenues, and Tesla hit a milestone with its first full-year profit in 2020. More broadly, more than 80% of S&P 500 companies that have reported Q4 2020 earnings have beaten consensus expectations so far. The Fed once again reiterated its commitment to aiding the U.S. recovery from the pandemic fallout, and congressional leadership signaled that Democrats may dive into negotiations on the next phase of fiscal stimulus (which has an opening bid of $1.9 trillion; we’re penciling in a package more like $750 billion) as soon as next week.

> But you probably missed all that because you were focused on the saga of GameStop, r/wallstreetbets, Robinhood, and the hedge funds who “shorted” the stock. But before we go there, let’s take a pause for the cause and make sure we’re on the same page about how shorting works.

> So imagine you have a friend who deals in collectible coins. After studying the c-o-i-n market, you have a view that certain c-o-i-n-s are going to go down in value. So how can you profit from this view? First, you borrow a few of the c-o-i-n-s from your friend, promising to give them back later, for a small fee. Next, you sell the c-o-i-n-s for their current market value… say, $100 per c-o-i-n. Over the next six months, the value of the c-o-i-n-s falls by 50% - you were right! Now, you buy back the c-o-i-n-s for $50 each, return them to your friend, and pocket the $50 profit you made (minus whatever fee you paid to borrow the coins). So that’s pretty much it.

> Now, for GameStop.

> If you hadn’t heard of GameStop before, you probably never played Call of Duty in middle school. GameStop sells video games in strip malls (and mall malls) throughout America. At face, it is a business in secular decline, so it was an easy “short” for hedge funds. They borrowed shares in the company and sold them, in the hope they could buy them back on the cheap if they lost value.

> But some Reddit-ers thought GameStop might actually turn its prospects around. They started to buy shares, and as the share price started to rise, others realized they might be able to force the short seller hedge funds to buy back their shares and cause a “short squeeze,” which can cause parabolic increases in stock prices.

> The increase in price for heavily shorted names can be self-reinforcing for a few reasons. It gets complicated quickly, but the basics are that as the price of the shorted security starts to rise, the entities that have “shorted” the shares start losing money. The potential loss on a short position can be infinite, so it can get very risky very quickly. Short sellers need to buy the stock back to close their positions, which forces the price higher.

> Further, when bullish investors buy call options on the stock to implement a positive view, the entity that sold them the option also needs to buy the stock so that it neutralizes its own risk (the options dealer is effectively “short” the stock when it sells the call option.). That’s a lot of buying! The schematic below helps understand how this works in practice.

> The vicious cycle of options trading, short squeezes, and hedge fund positioning Chart showing the cycle of options trading, short squeezes, and hedge fund positioning Source: J.P. Morgan Private Bank. See expandable image, opens new browser window | Show text version, opens overlay In a vacuum, there is nothing concerning or uncommon about a short squeeze. They don’t happen all the time, but they definitely happen more frequently than a cicada hatch. The beginning of Tesla’s torrid rise last year was described as a short squeeze. The Volkswagen episode during the Global Financial Crisis is another example. What is different this time is that the short squeeze hit many different names at once. Blackberry, American Airlines, AMC Theaters, and Nokia are some examples.

> What we are watching closely is the impact the short squeeze is having on the broader market. In order to access liquidity and take down risk, a number of hedge funds needed to sell out of stocks they actually owned. As a result, the S&P 500 lost -2.6% on Wednesday and implied volatility in both single names and the broad market spiked. At its peak this week, the VIX (which indicates the implied volatility of the S&P 500) jumped nearly 70% higher than where it was last Friday. The short squeeze went viral.

> To be clear, there is still a lot we don’t know:

> We don’t know where GameStop stock will settle eventually, but wherever it does either the short squeezers or the squeezed will have some pretty serious losses to reckon with. We don’t know how solid Robinhood’s balance sheet really is. It reportedly drew on at least some of its credit lines last night, and raised more capital from investors. We don’t know how much more hedge fund selling could come if Robinhood feels it needs to take down risk further. We don’t know if, how, or when regulators may start to restrict this kind of market activity. Most importantly, we don’t know how lasting the influence of the individual investor will be.

> While the story is still unfolding, we are relying on what we have more confidence in:

> So far, we haven’t found a link between this episode to something that is systemically important to the equity market or the economy. There could be more volatility as we work through the aftershocks. Indeed, after a +1% gain on Thursday, the S&P 500 is back down ~1% on Friday. The key forces we identified in our 2021 Outlook are still progressing largely as we expected. Despite early challenges, vaccine programs are showing promise. Policymakers continue to deliver abundant support. Inflation is stable. And the broad-based earnings recovery we expect throughout this year seems on track based on results from earnings season so far.

> Day trading and stock market volatility are nothing new, but what might be so captivating about the current episode is that the characters are so compelling and their archetypes are well known. It’s easy to imagine r/wallstreetbets as the unpolished underdogs, the hedge funds as the pretentious incumbents, Robinhood as the conflicted sidekick, and GameStop as the unpopular kid who gets a makeover before the big dance.

> For long-term investors, the most important takeaway is that volatility seems to be a feature (not a bug) of today’s investment environment. That’s why we continue to emphasize the importance of bolstering portfolios with allocations to assets with a lower correlation to equities and portfolio managers that focus on high-quality companies with competitive edges. We also see compelling opportunities for investors to use volatility to their advantage by buying equities on dips or pursuing strategies that generate income by selling that volatility.

> The GameStop story isn’t over yet, but market history is rife with examples of esoteric volatility spikes and the demise of notable investment funds. Based on what we currently know, we think this episode will be added to the list. For now, our optimistic outlook for the year ahead hasn’t changed. We continue to encourage investors to focus on the forest, not the trees.

> All market data from Bloomberg Finance L.P., 1/28/21.

>The truth is, solid megacap companies (Apple, amazon, Microsoft) will almost always beat mutual funds.

In Q2 2013, the largest company by market cap was Exxon Mobil. It's down about 50% since then.

The fourth largest was Berkshire Hathaway. It's underperformed the S&P 500 since then.

The fifth largest was Walmart. It's underperformed the S&P 500 since then.

The sixth largest was Johnson & Johnson. It's underperformed the S&P 500 since then.

The seventh largest was General Electric. It's down 80% this century and over 50% since then.

The ninth largest was Chevron. It's down about 20% since then.

The tenth largest was ICBC. It's basically flat since then.

That's a 70% rate of underperforming the S&P 500 among the top companies from just under 8 years ago.

> Nothing about their earnings or the gigafactory or model Y warrants the price going 5x in a few months.

You want to talk about irrationality? Look at Tesla's share price from 2014 to 2019. It went nowhere. It was stuck in the $200 to $300 range.

Then the Tesla Model 3 comes out, and starts landing on a number of best seller lists in 2019, and Tesla posted a profit in Q3 and Q4 of 2018. You'd think that would justify an increase in the stock price, right? Nope, TSLA's stock price went DOWN, it even fell below $200 a share at the height of Mr Market Man's absurd bearish sentiment.

There was a trigger to it sure, the Q1 2019 deliveries were lower than Q4 2018's numbers. People ignored the fact that auto-sales are seasonal, and all automakers sell more vehicles in the second half of the year than the first half, and took Tesla's 2019 Q1 sale numbers as a bearish sign, even though Q1's numbers were much better then they were a year ago.

> The criticisms of Tesla half a year ago are still very much valid today. Just because the stock value completely detatched form any actual value in the company because every average Joe with a smartphone has heard "tech is the future", doesn't mean the stock isn't wildly overvalued as is.

A lot of the criticism of Tesla in 2019 was that they were on the verge of bankruptcy. I think that's been very thoroughly debunked as nothing but wishful thinking given Tesla was profitable in 6 of the last 8 quarters, and how good Tesla is at raising more funding when necessary.

> Blindly following the market sentiment IS buying TSLA lol. Just look at the growth the past 6 months, the vast majority are buying into the hype. Doing 10 mins of research would make you realise how overvalued it is, so the only reason for buying after researching would be to speculate on the hype or a potential tech breakthrough that 10x their revenue.

> Yes reddit has been criticizing TSLA. Yes TSLAs price has multiplied. That doesn't mean what reddit is saying is wrong, it just means that you have to ignore analysis, value, and risk, and rather just specualte on the effects of group psychology in the stock market.

Timing is everything in the market. If you're buying into TSLA now you're probably FOMOing. But if you did your research and bought into TSLA in the $200's and $300's back when the hype that TSLA was going bankrupt was rampant in the media and at reddit you were going against the market sentiment. That's when I bought, that's when a number of prominent finance channel Youtubers bought into it.

As to the valuation of TSLA today, I think there's sides to this.

On one hand I actually agree with you that I wouldn't buy into TSLA today, because the risk of Mr. Market man reversing course and hating TSLA stock again in the near future is too high. I think odds are good we eventually see a pull back, quite possibly to $700, or maybe worst case $500.

On the other hand, I think you're not valuing Tesla correctly. Tesla's not as simple as something like KO or JNJ to value. I did not buy TSLA for what numbers they'd post in 2019, or 2020, or 2021, or 2022, or even 2023. I'm looking over a decade out in 2030, as are many other TSLA longs. I believe TSLA has a massive opportunity to grow into a trillion dollar company overtime. I think TSLA will be producing around 10 million BEV's a year by 2030.

The other automakers are huge today yes, and sell millions or tens of millions of vehicles today, yes. But guess what, not all market incumbents survive when new technology disrupts the market. Nokia utterly dominated the cell phone market, they sold 9 of the 10 best selling cell phone models. And yet that market dominance couldn't save them when Apple came along with the iPhone, Nokia tried to adapt to the technology shift, but they were too slow and too late.

The legacy automakers are trapped in a damned if they do, damned if they don't situation. They're making a bunch of money off of ICE vehicles right now. If they switch to selling BEV's they'll be cannibalizing that lucrative money maker, and they'll need to pour tens of billions of dollars into the R&D and other expenses of shifting to BEV's. And just like Tesla struggled to make a profit selling BEV's for a while, so will the legacy automakers when they make the shift. So why would they want to shift to BEV's in the first place?

Well, because if they don't they WILL die when BEV & battery tech improves to the point that they reach cost parity with ICE vehicles. By that point no one will want an ICE car, and it'll be far too late for them to shift to BEV's.

After a trial and error, I've been trying to stick to adjusting my portfolio once every quarter. Below is a list of my Q3 Portfolio. This quarter, I replaced BYND and ALB with APRN and WMT. Let me know what you guys think! This account is for individual stock investing only and I'm a low-risk player (yes my portfolio is boring).

• MSFT (21.5%) - Cash King, #2 Cloud, WFH and untact environment continue to push Microsoft up.
• AAPL (13.1%) - Another Cash King. Apple Republic continues to grow with its service business, and departure from Intel Chips.
• TSM (11.1%) - "We do not compete our client" #1 Chip manufacturing and possibly the biggest benefactor of the broken Apple-Intel aliance.
• T (11.1%) - Reducing debt, selling bad businesses, possibly the next hot item of Elliott Funds? Let's see how HBO Max does.
• JNJ (10.3%) - Cash King, no debt, lowest leverage business. Healthcare/Consumer Staples giant
• PEP (10.1%) - #2 in Beverage but #1 in snack. Everyone is munching snacks at home. Fall in beverage sales is covered by the rise in snacks sales.
• IBM (7.3%) - Only got the Plan A and no Plan B, but that Plan A seems solid. Could they follow the path of Microsoft, or are they just another General Electric?
• WM (6.4%) - Waste King. They outmatch all of their competitors combined.
• APRN (5.6%) - Could they benefit big time from COVID and people not eating out as much?
• WMT (3.5%/ to increase to 10%) - Offline giant is taking bigger steps at challenging the online giant. Could this work in their favor?

-Apple up if $14b profit. up 5% if $15.5b profit+

-Amazon stable and then up on higher revenues

-Microsoft up on $17.2b services revenue crazy growth unmatched anywhere except Apple service growth

-Tesla down but up once Gigafactory 3 finishes and production ramps up and easier to deliver on other side of world

-jpmorgan / Morgan Stanley up even if rates get cut a third time

-Goldman, Bank of America, Citigroup small up but investors will be mad at another miss (miss for Goldman)

• Netflix investors are mad that US subscribers were flat for a 2nd quarter in a row on the subscription price increases that went into effect in April

• Charles Schwab, Etrade, td ameritrade all did well and got slammed. Interest rates got cut twice still did well. Etrade guides up regardless. Up.

• Johnson and Johnson depends if marketing effects sales we’ll see stable

-Wells Fargo did well but lawsuits hid performance

• Taiwan semi up with Apple and did well. AMD guides up 47% revenue yoy growth and there are still tariffs.

-coca cola continued revenue growth looks good

-American express, visa, PNC up but lower rates negatively affect them just like the banks. MasterCard did the best out of them YoY

-SAP strong cloud growth

-Logitech slowed a little in growth but still growing. PC market strong

-McDonald’s returned to small revenue growth for first time since 2014. Has been cutting costs and revenues historically but too much competition.

• Snapchat outperformed and expands revenue growth but has runup a lot. They have a lot of people 210m is a lot. Premium service

• Texas Instruments did poorly for chips - downside forecast 3.0-3.3b vs 3.6b revenue

• UPS did well even with amazon expanding to 65 plane leases and buying 20,000 Mercedes vans to deliver

• FedEx was affected negatively by amazon leaving and fell 10%. We remain to see this quarter I think

• chipotle did well but investors sold off regardless along with McDonald’s who was also received negatively

• PayPal rallied on Venmo data but slight up

• ford down bad sales chance to steal GM sales on strike

• ebay down terrible performance

• twitter up politics with Facebook and trump

• Intel up on more pc sales and CPUs aren’t scarce

• Barclays up

• Verizon and ATT and T-Mobile have 5G buildout. T-Mobile says they’re ahead of schedule of build and will eventually merge with sprint next year -google grew revenue at 20% YoY vs 19% last quarter and 16% Q1. They need more profit but are setup. Uncertain time for them like amazon due to bad profits

• spotify good profits and has Samsung preinstalls for 6months Free, but guided for slight operating loss (could still profit on finance income) and then after that steady rise to $60b market cap over 2 years

• AMD will be in PlayStation and Xbox and works with amazon servers / etc good long term setup and I liked their forecast despite the hate

• alibaba up if they get $3b profit or more

• funko up and buyout by Disney

• Starbucks up on healthy revenue growth

• GE impossible time predict but will do well once boeing recovers? I don’t know enough but they build engines and revenues have been falling since 2016

• nintendo and Sony. Nintendo is stronger this year than ever but switch lite sales can disappoint. Nintendo online subscriptions were new I forget when. Sony sales peaked in March quarter but if they return to growth next quarter they’ll be fine. I think we’re in the late stages of console growth so I don’t expect much.

Tariffs to watch december 15 affects iPhones and laptops so that’s the only major event I can think of. I have CNBC now and trump twitter enabled as alerts to know about the market

People are in awe and get salty as fuck when some large cap doesn't get ripped apart on bad news and stays down like -50% from it's highs.

Like come on man, the company is not going extinct anytime soon. Like apple or google, big tech in general, even other big shit like jnj or pfe.

These behomoths have a ton of big money investors and you need them to pull out in large amounts to cause any serious sell off on these too big to fail companies.

This isn't GE or Sears. This is a king in it's sector with an insanely strong balance sheet, huge backlog of orders , and continued future growth as well as we expand into space.

Only a fucking moron is saying "ya I don't wanna hold boeing shares anymore. They might go out of business next Q so I should sell now . I didn't think Boeing was a long term investment anyways"

Hello! Welcome to /r/stockmarket

First off I’d recommend searching for posts about starting out & learning the basics, both here and on other investing/trading subreddits. The question has been asked hundreds of times, and you’ll find some amazing answers if you look.

The first thing you need to understand is that finance is all about information. If you want to learn, you need to take in information. All of the information. Books, news, financial statements, press releases and earning calls. Read everything. You will find hundreds of words you don’t understand, so look them up (investopedia have a majority of them). In the beginning you will struggle, however, as time goes by, you will start to understand. If you do not like reading, learn to like it. There is no way around this. If you find yourself investing without reading tons, you are going to lose.

Books to recommend: Anything written by warren buffet, A random walk down wall street by Burton Malkiel (how I started), Stress test by Timothy Geithner & The intelligent investor (“thick” but all important).

Pick out your favorite company in the world, and check if they are public. If they are, head over to their investor relations page and read the transcript to their latest earnings call. Read their financial statement (10-Q). If you don’t understand a word, look it up. This is frustrating but required.

There are 3 things you should consider buying as your first investment:

Large cap companies. These are the most risky you should consider buying. These large companies (Apple, Banks, Microsoft, 3M, JnJ, Walmart and the like) are stable, but can for sure give you a great return.

Specific ETFs. An ETF is a basket of stocks, often with some sort of focus. It gives you instant diversification. The specific ETFs are less risky than the single stocks, but hold risk nonetheless. Specific ETFs are baskets of stocks of varying number, letting you buy one security, and get a tiny portion of many companies. This lets you bet on a sector. Say you think that robotics and automation is the future, you can bet on that by investing in $ROBO. Other examples of these are $KWEB, chinese e-com, $FNG, media and tech, $ITA, aerospace and defence and $SOXX, semiconductors. These let you invest in a promising industry, without having the risk of a single company failing.

Lastly, and by far the best choice, is indexing. These are ETFS like $VOO, $VTI, $VWO and $VOOG,  and is a way to take on the least amount of risk while still gaining along with the market. You get a wide basket of stocks, focusing on things like the S&P500 ($VOO), which is an index of large (minimum 6.1 billion USD) US companies. Historically , you can expect 7% annual gain here. That’s realistic. Anything offering much more than that without risk has tons of risk without disclosing it, per definition. $VOOG indexes growth companies, focusing less on the giants and more on the up and coming. $VWO focuses on emerging markets, getting places like brazil, russia and all over asia. Indexing is by far the best choice, and will very often gain you a steady growth. The final and great choice is $VTI, which is the global basket which contains the market as a whole.

Remember, if you have to ask simple questions, you should be indexing. Asking questions is very important and a great way to learn, however, you should not make specific investments unless you can make the call 100% yourself with confidence. If you are not sure, you are making a mistake in purchasing.

Lastly, and honestly most importantly, here is a list of things you should ALWAYS be able to answer before buying a security, equity or derivative:

Why am I getting this instead of an index? Where is the upside?

If the stock goes up, what action do I take? When do I sell? At what price or % gain.

If the stock goes down, when do I sell? At what % loss or a price.

What risks are there? How does the worst case realistic scenario look like?

Why am I making this investment right now? Is there a better time?

What exactly am I buying?

And finally, always, without exception, perform your own Due Diligence. Don’t take advice from other people without understanding the situation yourself. If you have to ask questions, you should not own the equity. Ask about what you do not own. If you have to ask questions about an equity you already own, you have messed up.

If you are intrested in my writings, I have collected links to them (to this sub) on /r/lykosen

Welcome to the market.

/u/lykosen11

Hello! Welcome to /r/stockmarket

First off I’d recommend searching for posts about starting out & learning the basics, both here and on other investing/trading subreddits. The question has been asked hundreds of times, and you’ll find some amazing answers if you look.

The first thing you need to understand is that finance is all about information. If you want to learn, you need to take in information. All of the information. Books, news, financial statements, press releases and earning calls. Read everything. You will find hundreds of words you don’t understand, so look them up (investopedia have a majority of them). In the beginning you will struggle, however, as time goes by, you will start to understand. If you do not like reading, learn to like it. There is no way around this. If you find yourself investing without reading tons, you are going to lose.

Books to recommend: Anything written by warren buffet, A random walk down wall street by Burton Malkiel (how I started), Stress test by Timothy Geithner & The intelligent investor (“thick” but all important).

Pick out your favorite company in the world, and check if they are public. If they are, head over to their investor relations page and read the transcript to their latest earnings call. Read their financial statement (10-Q). If you don’t understand a word, look it up. This is frustrating but required.

There are 3 things you should consider buying as your first investment:

Large cap companies. These are the most risky you should consider buying. These large companies (Apple, Banks, Microsoft, 3M, JnJ, Walmart and the like) are stable, but can for sure give you a great return.

Specific ETFs. An ETF is a basket of stocks, often with some sort of focus. It gives you instant diversification. The specific ETFs are less risky than the single stocks, but hold risk nonetheless. Specific ETFs are baskets of stocks of varying number, letting you buy one security, and get a tiny portion of many companies. This lets you bet on a sector. Say you think that robotics and automation is the future, you can bet on that by investing in $ROBO. Other examples of these are $KWEB, chinese e-com, $FNG, media and tech, $ITA, aerospace and defence and $SOXX, semiconductors. These let you invest in a promising industry, without having the risk of a single company failing.

Lastly, and by far the best choice, is indexing. These are ETFS like $VOO, $VTI, $VWO and $VOOG,  and is a way to take on the least amount of risk while still gaining along with the market. You get a wide basket of stocks, focusing on things like the S&P500 ($VOO), which is an index of large (minimum 6.1 billion USD) US companies. Historically , you can expect 7% annual gain here. That’s realistic. Anything offering much more than that without risk has tons of risk without disclosing it, per definition. $VOOG indexes growth companies, focusing less on the giants and more on the up and coming. $VWO focuses on emerging markets, getting places like brazil, russia and all over asia. Indexing is by far the best choice, and will very often gain you a steady growth. The final and great choice is $VTI, which is the global basket which contains the market as a whole.

Remember, if you have to ask simple questions, you should be indexing. Asking questions is very important and a great way to learn, however, you should not make specific investments unless you can make the call 100% yourself with confidence. If you are not sure, you are making a mistake in purchasing.

Lastly, and honestly most importantly, here is a list of things you should ALWAYS be able to answer before buying a security, equity or derivative:

Why am I getting this instead of an index? Where is the upside?

If the stock goes up, what action do I take? When do I sell? At what price or % gain.

If the stock goes down, when do I sell? At what % loss or a price.

What risks are there? How does the worst case realistic scenario look like?

Why am I making this investment right now? Is there a better time?

What exactly am I buying?

And finally, always, without exception, perform your own Due Diligence. Don’t take advice from other people without understanding the situation yourself. If you have to ask questions, you should not own the equity. Ask about what you do not own. If you have to ask questions about an equity you already own, you have messed up.

If you are intrested in my writings, I have collected links to them (to this sub) on /r/lykosen

Welcome to the market.

/u/lykosen11

Hello! Welcome to /r/stockmarket

First off I’d recommend searching for posts about starting out & learning the basics, both here and on other investing/trading subreddits. The question has been asked hundreds of times, and you’ll find some amazing answers if you look.

The first thing you need to understand is that finance is all about information. If you want to learn, you need to take in information. All of the information. Books, news, financial statements, press releases and earning calls. Read everything. You will find hundreds of words you don’t understand, so look them up (investopedia have a majority of them). In the beginning you will struggle, however, as time goes by, you will start to understand. If you do not like reading, learn to like it. There is no way around this. If you find yourself investing without reading tons, you are going to lose.

Books to recommend: Anything written by warren buffet, A random walk down wall street by Burton Malkiel (how I started), Stress test by Timothy Geithner & The intelligent investor (“thick” but all important).

Pick out your favorite company in the world, and check if they are public. If they are, head over to their investor relations page and read the transcript to their latest earnings call. Read their financial statement (10-Q). If you don’t understand a word, look it up. This is frustrating but required.

There are 3 things you should consider buying as your first investment:

Large cap companies. These are the most risky you should consider buying. These large companies (Apple, Banks, Microsoft, 3M, JnJ, Walmart and the like) are stable, but can for sure give you a great return.

Specific ETFs. An ETF is a basket of stocks, often with some sort of focus. It gives you instant diversification. The specific ETFs are less risky than the single stocks, but hold risk nonetheless. Specific ETFs are baskets of stocks of varying number, letting you buy one security, and get a tiny portion of many companies. This lets you bet on a sector. Say you think that robotics and automation is the future, you can bet on that by investing in $ROBO. Other examples of these are $KWEB, chinese e-com, $FNG, media and tech, $ITA, aerospace and defence and $SOXX, semiconductors. These let you invest in a promising industry, without having the risk of a single company failing.

Lastly, and by far the best choice, is indexing. These are ETFS like $VOO, $VTI, $VWO and $VOOG,  and is a way to take on the least amount of risk while still gaining along with the market. You get a wide basket of stocks, focusing on things like the S&P500 ($VOO), which is an index of large (minimum 6.1 billion USD) US companies. Historically , you can expect 7% annual gain here. That’s realistic. Anything offering much more than that without risk has tons of risk without disclosing it, per definition. $VOOG indexes growth companies, focusing less on the giants and more on the up and coming. $VWO focuses on emerging markets, getting places like brazil, russia and all over asia. Indexing is by far the best choice, and will very often gain you a steady growth. The final and great choice is $VTI, which is the global basket which contains the market as a whole.

Remember, if you have to ask simple questions, you should be indexing. Asking questions is very important and a great way to learn, however, you should not make specific investments unless you can make the call 100% yourself with confidence. If you are not sure, you are making a mistake in purchasing.

Lastly, and honestly most importantly, here is a list of things you should ALWAYS be able to answer before buying a security, equity or derivative:

Why am I getting this instead of an index? Where is the upside?

If the stock goes up, what action do I take? When do I sell? At what price or % gain.

If the stock goes down, when do I sell? At what % loss or a price.

What risks are there? How does the worst case realistic scenario look like?

Why am I making this investment right now? Is there a better time?

What exactly am I buying?

And finally, always, without exception, perform your own Due Diligence. Don’t take advice from other people without understanding the situation yourself. If you have to ask questions, you should not own the equity. Ask about what you do not own. If you have to ask questions about an equity you already own, you have messed up.

If you are intrested in my writings, I have collected links to them (to this sub) on /r/lykosen

Welcome to the market.

/u/lykosen11

Hello! Welcome to /r/stockmarket

First off I’d recommend searching for posts about starting out & learning the basics, both here and on other investing/trading subreddits. The question has been asked hundreds of times, and you’ll find some amazing answers if you look.

The first thing you need to understand is that finance is all about information. If you want to learn, you need to take in information. All of the information. Books, news, financial statements, press releases and earning calls. Read everything. You will find hundreds of words you don’t understand, so look them up (investopedia have a majority of them). In the beginning you will struggle, however, as time goes by, you will start to understand. If you do not like reading, learn to like it. There is no way around this. If you find yourself investing without reading tons, you are going to lose.

Books to recommend: Anything written by warren buffet, A random walk down wall street by Burton Malkiel (how I started), Stress test by Timothy Geithner & The intelligent investor (“thick” but all important).

Pick out your favorite company in the world, and check if they are public. If they are, head over to their investor relations page and read the transcript to their latest earnings call. Read their financial statement (10-Q). If you don’t understand a word, look it up. This is frustrating but required.

There are 3 things you should consider buying as your first investment:

Large cap companies. These are the most risky you should consider buying. These large companies (Apple, Banks, Microsoft, 3M, JnJ, Walmart and the like) are stable, but can for sure give you a great return.

Specific ETFs. An ETF is a basket of stocks, often with some sort of focus. It gives you instant diversification. The specific ETFs are less risky than the single stocks, but hold risk nonetheless. Specific ETFs are baskets of stocks of varying number, letting you buy one security, and get a tiny portion of many companies. This lets you bet on a sector. Say you think that robotics and automation is the future, you can bet on that by investing in $ROBO. Other examples of these are $KWEB, chinese e-com, $FNG, media and tech, $ITA, aerospace and defence and $SOXX, semiconductors. These let you invest in a promising industry, without having the risk of a single company failing.

Lastly, and by far the best choice, is indexing. These are ETFS like $VOO, $VTI, $VWO and $VOOG,  and is a way to take on the least amount of risk while still gaining along with the market. You get a wide basket of stocks, focusing on things like the S&P500 ($VOO), which is an index of large (minimum 6.1 billion USD) US companies. Historically , you can expect 7% annual gain here. That’s realistic. Anything offering much more than that without risk has tons of risk without disclosing it, per definition. $VOOG indexes growth companies, focusing less on the giants and more on the up and coming. $VWO focuses on emerging markets, getting places like brazil, russia and all over asia. Indexing is by far the best choice, and will very often gain you a steady growth. The final and great choice is $VTI, which is the global basket which contains the market as a whole.

Remember, if you have to ask simple questions, you should be indexing. Asking questions is very important and a great way to learn, however, you should not make specific investments unless you can make the call 100% yourself with confidence. If you are not sure, you are making a mistake in purchasing.

Lastly, and honestly most importantly, here is a list of things you should ALWAYS be able to answer before buying a security, equity or derivative:

Why am I getting this instead of an index? Where is the upside?

If the stock goes up, what action do I take? When do I sell? At what price or % gain.

If the stock goes down, when do I sell? At what % loss or a price.

What risks are there? How does the worst case realistic scenario look like?

Why am I making this investment right now? Is there a better time?

What exactly am I buying?

And finally, always, without exception, perform your own Due Diligence. Don’t take advice from other people without understanding the situation yourself. If you have to ask questions, you should not own the equity. Ask about what you do not own. If you have to ask questions about an equity you already own, you have messed up.

Welcome to the market.

/u/lykosen11

Hello! Welcome to /r/stockmarket

First off I’d recommend searching for posts about starting out & learning the basics, both here and on other investing/trading subreddits. The question has been asked hundreds of times, and you’ll find some amazing answers if you look. I also started at 17, but be ready to do research, invest, be happy when you do well, and then crash. All part of your learning curve.

The first thing you need to understand is that finance is all about information. If you want to learn, you need to take in information. All of the information. Books, news, financial statements, press releases and earning calls. Read everything. You will find hundreds of words you don’t understand, so look them up (investopedia have a majority of them). In the beginning you will struggle, however, as time goes by, you will start to understand. If you do not like reading, learn to like it. There is no way around this. If you find yourself investing without reading tons, you are going to lose.

Books to recommend: Anything written by warren buffet, A random walk down wall street by Burton Malkiel (how I started), Stress test by Timothy Geithner & The intelligent investor (“thick” but all important).

Pick out your favorite company in the world, and check if they are public. If they are, head over to their investor relations page and read the transcript to their latest earnings call. Read their financial statement (10-Q). If you don’t understand a word, look it up. This is frustrating but required.

There are 3 things you should consider buying as your first investment:

Large cap companies. These are the most risky you should consider buying. These large companies (Apple, Banks, Microsoft, 3M, JnJ, Walmart and the like) are stable, but can for sure give you a great return.

Specific ETFs. An ETF is a basket of stocks, often with some sort of focus. It gives you instant diversification. The specific ETFs are less risky than the single stocks, but hold risk nonetheless. Specific ETFs are baskets of stocks of varying number, letting you buy one security, and get a tiny portion of many companies. This lets you bet on a sector. Say you think that robotics and automation is the future, you can bet on that by investing in $ROBO. Other examples of these are $KWEB, chinese e-com, $FNG, media and tech, $ITA, aerospace and defence and $SOXX, semiconductors. These let you invest in a promising industry, without having the risk of a single company failing.

Lastly, and by far the best choice, is indexing. These are ETFS like $VOO, $VTI, $VWO and $VOOG,  and is a way to take on the least amount of risk while still gaining along with the market. You get a wide basket of stocks, focusing on things like the S&P500 ($VOO), which is an index of large (minimum 6.1 billion USD) US companies. Historically , you can expect 7% annual gain here. That’s realistic. Anything offering much more than that without risk has tons of risk without disclosing it, per definition. $VOOG indexes growth companies, focusing less on the giants and more on the up and coming. $VWO focuses on emerging markets, getting places like brazil, russia and all over asia. Indexing is by far the best choice, and will very often gain you a steady growth. The final and great choice is $VTI, which is the global basket which contains the market as a whole.

Remember, if you have to ask simple questions, you should be indexing. Asking questions is very important and a great way to learn, however, you should not make specific investments unless you can make the call 100% yourself with confidence. If you are not sure, you are making a mistake in purchasing.

Lastly, and honestly most importantly, here is a list of things you should ALWAYS be able to answer before buying a security, equity or derivative:

Why am I getting this instead of an index? Where is the upside?

If the stock goes up, what action do I take? When do I sell? At what price or % gain.

If the stock goes down, when do I sell? At what % loss or a price.

What risks are there? How does the worst case realistic scenario look like?

Why am I making this investment right now? Is there a better time?

What exactly am I buying?

And finally, always, without exception, perform your own Due Diligence. Don’t take advice from other people without understanding the situation yourself. If you have to ask questions, you should not own the equity. Ask about what you do not own. If you have to ask questions about an equity you already own, you have messed up.

Welcome to the market.

/u/lykosen11

Hello! Welcome to /r/stockmarket

First off I’d recommend searching for posts about starting out & learning the basics, both here and on other investing/trading subreddits. The question has been asked hundreds of times, and you’ll find some amazing answers if you look.

The first thing you need to understand is that finance is all about information. If you want to learn, you need to take in information. All of the information. Books, news, financial statements, press releases and earning calls. Read everything. You will find hundreds of words you don’t understand, so look them up (investopedia have a majority of them). In the beginning you will struggle, however, as time goes by, you will start to understand. If you do not like reading, learn to like it. There is no way around this. If you find yourself investing without reading tons, you are going to lose.

Books to recommend: Anything written by warren buffet, A random walk down wall street by Burton Malkiel (how I started), Stress test by Timothy Geithner & The intelligent investor (“thick” but all important).

Pick out your favorite company in the world, and check if they are public. If they are, head over to their investor relations page and read the transcript to their latest earnings call. Read their financial statement (10-Q). If you don’t understand a word, look it up. This is frustrating but required.

There are 3 things you should consider buying as your first investment:

Large cap companies. These are the most risky you should consider buying. These large companies (Apple, Banks, Microsoft, 3M, JnJ, Walmart and the like) are stable, but can for sure give you a great return.

Specific ETFs. An ETF is a basket of stocks, often with some sort of focus. It gives you instant diversification. The specific ETFs are less risky than the single stocks, but hold risk nonetheless. Specific ETFs are baskets of stocks of varying number, letting you buy one security, and get a tiny portion of many companies. This lets you bet on a sector. Say you think that robotics and automation is the future, you can bet on that by investing in $ROBO. Other examples of these are $KWEB, chinese e-com, $FNG, media and tech, $ITA, aerospace and defence and $SOXX, semiconductors. These let you invest in a promising industry, without having the risk of a single company failing.

Lastly, and by far the best choice, is indexing. These are ETFS like $VOO, $VTI, $VWO and $VOOG,  and is a way to take on the least amount of risk while still gaining along with the market. You get a wide basket of stocks, focusing on things like the S&P500 ($VOO), which is an index of large (minimum 6.1 billion USD) US companies. Historically , you can expect 7% annual gain here. That’s realistic. Anything offering much more than that without risk has tons of risk without disclosing it, per definition. $VOOG indexes growth companies, focusing less on the giants and more on the up and coming. $VWO focuses on emerging markets, getting places like brazil, russia and all over asia. Indexing is by far the best choice, and will very often gain you a steady growth. The final and great choice is $VTI, which is the global basket which contains the market as a whole.

Remember, if you have to ask simple questions, you should be indexing. Asking questions is very important and a great way to learn, however, you should not make specific investments unless you can make the call 100% yourself with confidence. If you are not sure, you are making a mistake in purchasing.

Lastly, and honestly most importantly, here is a list of things you should ALWAYS be able to answer before buying a security, equity or derivative:

Why am I getting this instead of an index? Where is the upside?

If the stock goes up, what action do I take? When do I sell? At what price or % gain.

If the stock goes down, when do I sell? At what % loss or a price.

What risks are there? How does the worst case realistic scenario look like?

Why am I making this investment right now? Is there a better time?

What exactly am I buying?

And finally, always, without exception, perform your own Due Diligence. Don’t take advice from other people without understanding the situation yourself. If you have to ask questions, you should not own the equity. Ask about what you do not own. If you have to ask questions about an equity you already own, you have messed up.

Welcome to the market.

/u/lykosen11

Hello! Welcome to /r/stockmarket

First off I’d recommend searching for posts about starting out & learning the basics, both here and on other investing/trading subreddits. The question has been asked hundreds of times, and you’ll find some amazing answers if you look.

The first thing you need to understand is that finance is all about information. If you want to learn, you need to take in information. All of the information. Books, news, financial statements, press releases and earning calls. Read everything. You will find hundreds of words you don’t understand, so look them up (investopedia have a majority of them). In the beginning you will struggle, however, as time goes by, you will start to understand. If you do not like reading, learn to like it. There is no way around this. If you find yourself investing without reading tons, you are going to lose.

Books to recommend: Anything written by warren buffet, A random walk down wall street by Burton Malkiel (how I started), Stress test by Timothy Geithner & The intelligent investor (“thick” but all important).

Pick out your favorite company in the world, and check if they are public. If they are, head over to their investor relations page and read the transcript to their latest earnings call. Read their financial statement (10-Q). If you don’t understand a word, look it up. This is frustrating but required.

There are 3 things you should consider buying as your first investment:

Large cap companies. These are the most risky you should consider buying. These large companies (Apple, Banks, Microsoft, 3M, JnJ, Walmart and the like) are stable, but can for sure give you a great return.

Specific ETFs. An ETF is a basket of stocks, often with some sort of focus. It gives you instant diversification. The specific ETFs are less risky than the single stocks, but hold risk nonetheless. Specific ETFs are baskets of stocks of varying number, letting you buy one security, and get a tiny portion of many companies. This lets you bet on a sector. Say you think that robotics and automation is the future, you can bet on that by investing in $ROBO. Other examples of these are $KWEB, chinese e-com, $FNG, media and tech, $ITA, aerospace and defence and $SOXX, semiconductors. These let you invest in a promising industry, without having the risk of a single company failing.

Lastly, and by far the best choice, is indexing. These are ETFS like $VOO, $VTI, $VWO and $VOOG, and is a way to take on the least amount of risk while still gaining along with the market. You get a wide basket of stocks, focusing on things like the S&P500 ($VOO), which is an index of large (minimum 6.1 billion USD) US companies. Historically , you can expect 7% annual gain here. That’s realistic. Anything offering much more than that without risk has tons of risk without disclosing it, per definition. $VOOG indexes growth companies, focusing less on the giants and more on the up and coming. $VWO focuses on emerging markets, getting places like brazil, russia and all over asia. Indexing is by far the best choice, and will very often gain you a steady growth. The final and great choice is $VTI, which is the global basket which contains the market as a whole.

Remember, if you have to ask simple questions, you should be indexing. Asking questions is very important and a great way to learn, however, you should not make specific investments unless you can make the call 100% yourself with confidence. If you are not sure, you are making a mistake in purchasing.

Lastly, and honestly most importantly, here is a list of things you should ALWAYS be able to answer before buying a security, equity or derivative:

Why am I getting this instead of an index? Where is the upside? If the stock goes up, what action do I take? When do I sell? At what price or % gain. If the stock goes down, when do I sell? At what % loss or a price. What risks are there? How does the worst case realistic scenario look like? Why am I making this investment right now? Is there a better time? What exactly am I buying?

And finally, always, without exception, perform your own Due Diligence. Don’t take advice from other people without understanding the situation yourself. If you have to ask questions, you should not own the equity. Ask about what you do not own. If you have to ask questions about an equity you already own, you have messed up.

Welcome to the market.

/u/lykosen11

First of all, robinhood is an phone app, and it's a commission free online broker. It's a good place to start in the US, no fees. But also...

Hello! Welcome to /r/stockmarket

First off I’d recommend searching for posts about starting out & learning the basics, both here and on other investing/trading subreddits. The question has been asked hundreds of times, and you’ll find some amazing answers if you look.

The first thing you need to understand is that finance is all about information. If you want to learn, you need to take in information. All of the information. Books, news, financial statements, press releases and earning calls. Read everything. You will find hundreds of words you don’t understand, so look them up (investopedia have a majority of them). In the beginning you will struggle, however, as time goes by, you will start to understand. If you do not like reading, learn to like it. There is no way around this. If you find yourself investing without reading tons, you are going to lose.

Books to recommend: Anything written by warren buffet, A random walk down wall street by Burton Malkiel (how I started), Stress test by Timothy Geithner & The intelligent investor (“thick” but all important).

Pick out your favorite company in the world, and check if they are public. If they are, head over to their investor relations page and read the transcript to their latest earnings call. Read their financial statement (10-Q). If you don’t understand a word, look it up. This is frustrating but required.

There are 3 things you should consider buying as your first investment:

Large cap companies. These are the most risky you should consider buying. These large companies (Apple, Banks, Microsoft, 3M, JnJ, Walmart and the like) are stable, but can for sure give you a great return.

Specific ETFs. An ETF is a basket of stocks, often with some sort of focus. It gives you instant diversification. The specific ETFs are less risky than the single stocks, but hold risk nonetheless. Specific ETFs are baskets of stocks of varying number, letting you buy one security, and get a tiny portion of many companies. This lets you bet on a sector. Say you think that robotics and automation is the future, you can bet on that by investing in $ROBO. Other examples of these are $KWEB, chinese e-com, $FNG, media and tech, $ITA, aerospace and defence and $SOXX, semiconductors. These let you invest in a promising industry, without having the risk of a single company failing.

Lastly, and by far the best choice, is indexing. These are ETFS like $VOO, $VTI, $VWO and $VOOG,  and is a way to take on the least amount of risk while still gaining along with the market. You get a wide basket of stocks, focusing on things like the S&P500 ($VOO), which is an index of large (minimum 6.1 billion USD) US companies. Historically , you can expect 7% annual gain here. That’s realistic. Anything offering much more than that without risk has tons of risk without disclosing it, per definition. $VOOG indexes growth companies, focusing less on the giants and more on the up and coming. $VWO focuses on emerging markets, getting places like brazil, russia and all over asia. Indexing is by far the best choice, and will very often gain you a steady growth. The final and great choice is $VTI, which is the global basket which contains the market as a whole.

Remember, if you have to ask simple questions, you should be indexing. Asking questions is very important and a great way to learn, however, you should not make specific investments unless you can make the call 100% yourself with confidence. If you are not sure, you are making a mistake in purchasing.

Lastly, and honestly most importantly, here is a list of things you should ALWAYS be able to answer before buying a security, equity or derivative:

Why am I getting this instead of an index? Where is the upside?

If the stock goes up, what action do I take? When do I sell? At what price or % gain.

If the stock goes down, when do I sell? At what % loss or a price.

What risks are there? How does the worst case realistic scenario look like?

Why am I making this investment right now? Is there a better time?

What exactly am I buying?

And finally, always, without exception, perform your own Due Diligence. Don’t take advice from other people without understanding the situation yourself. If you have to ask questions, you should not own the equity. Ask about what you do not own. If you have to ask questions about an equity you already own, you have messed up.

Welcome to the market.

/u/lykosen11

Hello! Welcome to /r/stockmarket

First off I’d recommend searching for posts about starting out & learning the basics, both here and on other investing/trading subreddits. The question has been asked hundreds of times, and you’ll find some amazing answers if you look.

The first thing you need to understand is that finance is all about information. If you want to learn, you need to take in information. All of the information. Books, news, financial statements, press releases and earning calls. Read everything. You will find hundreds of words you don’t understand, so look them up (investopedia have a majority of them). In the beginning you will struggle, however, as time goes by, you will start to understand.

Books to recommend: Anything written by warren buffet, A random walk down wall street by Burton Malkiel (how I started), Stress test by Timothy Geithner & The intelligent investor (“thick” but all important).

Pick out your favorite company in the world, and check if they are public. If they are, head over to their investor relations page and read the transcript to their latest earnings call. Read their financial statement (10-Q). If you don’t understand a word, look it up. This is frustrating but required.

There are 3 things you should consider buying as your first investment:

Large cap companies. These are the most risky you should consider buying. These large companies (Apple, Banks, Microsoft, 3M, JnJ, Walmart and the like) are stable, but can for sure give you a great return.

Specific ETFs. An ETF is a basket of stocks, often with some sort of focus. It gives you instant diversification. The specific ETFs are less risky than the single stocks, but hold risk nonetheless. Specific ETFs are baskets of stocks of varying number, letting you buy one security, and get a tiny portion of many companies. This lets you bet on a sector. Say you think that robotics and automation is the future, you can bet on that by investing in $ROBO. Other examples of these are $KWEB, chinese e-com, $FNG, media and tech, $ITA, aerospace and defence and $SOXX, semiconductors. These let you invest in a promising industry, without having the risk of a single company failing.

Lastly, and by far the best choice, is indexing. These are ETFS like $VOO, $VWO, $VTI and $VOOG, and is a way to take on the least amount of risk while still gaining with the market. You get a wide basket of stocks, focusing on things like the S&P500 ($VOO), which is an index of large (minimum 6.1 billion USD) US companies. Historically , you can expect 7% annual gain here. That’s realistic. Anything offering much more than that without risk has tons of risk without disclosing it, per definition. $VOOG indexes growth companies, focusing less on the giants and more on the up and coming. $VWO focuses on emerging markets, getting places like brazil, russia and all over asia. Indexing is by far the best choice, and will very often gain you a steady growth. The final and great choice is $VTI, which is the global basket which contains the market as a whole.

Remember, if you have to ask simple questions, you should be indexing. Asking questions is very important and a great way to learn, however, you should not make specific investments unless you can make the call 100% yourself with confidence. If you are not sure, you are making a mistake in purchasing.

Lastly, and honestly most importantly, here is a list of things you should ALWAYS be able to answer before buying a security, equity or derivative:

Why am I getting this instead of an index? Where is the upside? If the stock goes up, what action do I take? When do I sell? If the stock goes down, when do I sell? What risks are there? How does the worst case realistic scenario look like? Why am I making this investment right now? Is there a better time? What exactly am I buying?

And finally, always, without exception, perform your own Due Diligence. Don’t take advice from other people without understanding the situation yourself.

Welcome to the market.

/u/lykosen11

|Company|Symbol|Price|Change|Change%|Analytics| |:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--| |Visa Inc.|V|98.21|-0.04|-0.04| HOVER: More Info |Facebook, Inc.|FB|163.21|-0.93|-0.57| HOVER: More Info |AT&T Inc.|T|36.26|+0.12|0.35| HOVER: More Info |Philip Morris International Inc|PM|119.03|-2.59|-2.13| HOVER: More Info |Coca-Cola Company (The)|KO|44.84|+0.01|0.02| HOVER: More Info |Johnson & Johnson|JNJ|135.93|+0.72|0.53| HOVER: More Info |United Parcel Service, Inc.|UPS|112.80|-0.19|-0.17| HOVER: More Info |Apple Inc.|AAPL|150.79|-0.23|-0.15| HOVER: More Info |Realty Income Corporation|O|57.44|+0.28|0.49| HOVER: More Info |Boeing Company (The)|BA|210.63|-0.16|-0.08| HOVER: More Info

^^Quotr ^^Bot ^^v1.0 ^^by ^^spookyyz

|Company|Symbol|Price|Change|Change%|Analytics| |:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--| |Johnson & Johnson Common Stock|JNJ|136.59|+1.68|1.24| HOVER: More Info |Apple Inc.|AAPL|146.39|+0.52|0.36| HOVER: More Info |Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (The)|GS|220.16|-2.33|-1.05| HOVER: More Info |Caseys General Stores, Inc.|CASY|105.96|-1.03|-0.96| HOVER: More Info |Amazon.com, Inc.|AMZN|1,003.03|+0.80|0.08| HOVER: More Info |Boeing Company (The) Common Sto|BA|199.87|+0.70|0.35| HOVER: More Info

^^Quotr ^^Bot ^^v1.0 ^^by ^^spookyyz

|Company|Symbol|Price|Change|Change%|Analytics| |:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--| |Vanguard S&P 500 ETF|VOO|224.19|+0.79|0.35| HOVER: More Info |Apple Inc.|AAPL|155.17|+1.99|1.30| HOVER: More Info |Visa Inc.|V|96.01|+0.61|0.64| HOVER: More Info |Microsoft Corporation|MSFT|71.51|+1.41|2.02| HOVER: More Info |Amazon.com, Inc.|AMZN|1,006.76|+10.81|1.09| HOVER: More Info |Alphabet Inc.|GOOGL|995.37|+7.08|0.72| HOVER: More Info |Johnson & Johnson Common Stock|JNJ|129.49|+0.71|0.55| HOVER: More Info |Procter & Gamble Company (The)|PG|88.16|+0.03|0.03| HOVER: More Info

^^Quotr ^^Bot ^^v1.0 ^^by ^^spookyyz

|Company|Symbol|Price|Change|Change%|Analytics| |:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--| |AT&T Inc.|T|38.35|+0.10|0.27| HOVER: More Info |Johnson & Johnson Common Stock|JNJ|127.54|+0.28|0.22| HOVER: More Info |Wells Fargo & Company Common St|WFC|53.35|+0.34|0.64| HOVER: More Info |Apple Inc.|AAPL|153.52|-0.47|-0.31| HOVER: More Info |Walt Disney Company (The) Commo|DIS|107.26|-0.32|-0.30| HOVER: More Info |Amazon.com, Inc.|AMZN|969.54|-1.13|-0.12| HOVER: More Info |Barrick Gold Corporation Common|ABX|16.56|-0.32|-1.87| HOVER: More Info |Gilead Sciences, Inc.|GILD|64.65|+0.29|0.46| HOVER: More Info |Tanger Factory Outlet Centers,|SKT|26.20|+0.24|0.92| HOVER: More Info

^^Quotr ^^Bot ^^v1.0 ^^by ^^spookyyz

|Company|Symbol|Price|Change|Change%|Analytics| |:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--| |Dow Chemical Company (The) Comm|DOW|61.75|+0.49|0.80| HOVER: More Info |Costco Wholesale Corporation|COST|176.93|+1.07|0.61| HOVER: More Info |Estee Lauder Companies, Inc. (T|EL|85.63|+0.63|0.74| HOVER: More Info |Aetna Inc. Common Stock|AET|126.68|+1.41|1.13| HOVER: More Info |Apple Inc.|AAPL|136.26|+0.54|0.40| HOVER: More Info |Johnson & Johnson Common Stock|JNJ|119.81|+0.95|0.80| HOVER: More Info |Visa Inc.|V|87.45|-0.01|-0.01| HOVER: More Info |Toyota Motor Corporation Common|TM|114.38|+0.68|0.60| HOVER: More Info

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|Company|Symbol|Price|Change|Change%|Analytics| |:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|:--| |Apple Inc.|AAPL|116.22|-0.84|-0.72| HOVER: More Info |Alphabet Inc.|GOOGL|809.68|-2.52|-0.31| HOVER: More Info |Johnson & Johnson Common Stock|JNJ|115.44|+0.13|0.11| HOVER: More Info |Nike, Inc. Common Stock|NKE|52.14|-0.16|-0.31| HOVER: More Info |Starbucks Corporation|SBUX|57.11|-0.33|-0.57| HOVER: More Info |Gilead Sciences, Inc.|GILD|73.30|-0.66|-0.89| HOVER: More Info |Facebook, Inc.|FB|117.40|-1.64|-1.38| HOVER: More Info |American Express Company Common|AXP|74.58|-0.74|-0.98| HOVER: More Info

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I understand your concern about investing, and I don't want to sound condescending or anything because it's a very legitimate concern that a lot of people have.....BUT....it betrays a level of ignorance about how your money works.

Let's look at a hypothetical:

You have $10k in a savings account, down at your local bank. Interest rates in the US are around 2%, and at least for the foreseeable future they should be below 5%. Let's look at your money over time: Day 1: $10,000

Year 1 (365 days later): $10,000 - 0.02(inflation) * 10,000 + 10,000 * 0.001(a reasonable savings interest rate) = $9,810

Year 2: $9,623

Year 10: $8,254

Year 30: $5,624

So you can see that as you are right now, You're losing a pretty good chunk of money annually, because the rate of inflation is much higher than the interest rate in your account. Sure, you'll be adding to this consistently, but that doesn't change the fact that you will be losing money every year - if you want $2 million to retire on, you will have to save much more than that - in fact, you would have to save almost $80,000 per year from now until age 60 if you wanted to have $2 million in this account at retirement. You may be worried about risk now, but what about risk when you're old and tired?

So, instead let's look at just how risky mutual funds actually are. What makes these funds so powerful is that they diversify naturally. If you put all $29k into Apple stock, you would have every right to be worried. Instead, mutual funds allow you to invest in dozens or hundreds of companies in different economic sectors, without having to do all the leg work yourself by tediously picking out some energy companies, some medical technology companies, some long-term bonds, some international stocks etc.

Mutual funds are set up to do this already, and you can get a million and one of them to do what you want. If you truly feel overwhelmed, take a look at Asset Allocation Funds - they're designed for people who, well, feel overwhelmed. The fund will have a year in the title - 2030, 2055, 2060 - or something like that. Pick the year you want to retire, and invest in that one. What happens is that not only are these funds designed to encompass different economies and industries, they manage risk for you. Right now, as a 26-year old, most will have a fair amount of risk (although you can buy less risky ones). As you get closer to retirement, the fund automatically starts selling your risky stocks and moving into safer, lower-yield bonds. By the time you retire, the fund will be making almost no money, but it will also have practically 0 risk.

If you would rather have more control and knowledge over what you're actually investing in, here's some rules of thumb:

1. Have at least a small amount invested in international stocks. Just because the US economy tanks doesn't necessarily mean Singapore's will.

2. Invest in different industries - luxury goods perform poorly in bad times, but things like basic food, toiletries, and alcohol tend to waver less during those bad times. If you invest in Apple, Google, and Microsoft, that doesn't count as diversification.

3. A common rule is that the percentage of your portfolio in stocks should roughly equal 100-Your age. In your case, 74% is seen as a pretty normal percentage to have tied up in stocks. More is totally fine, but from your post it sounds like you are risk averse and may want to go lower than that. Look at funds that perform well compared to their "peers" - other funds in that category. Also, look for low expense ratios - the amount that the company charges you annually can really eat into your profits, and generally an expense ratio of > 1% is a no go.

4. Risk tolerance. Your investments are designed to work for you. If they're costing you sleep, they're doing a shit job and you should move them, even if your investments are technically sound. There's no shame in being safe, if that's what's going to make you happy. Take a quiz like this to see what your risk tolerance is, and pay attention to the risk factors in your mutual funds. Yahoo Finance, just to name one site, lays out the risk factors in a mutual fund pretty well. For example, this fund has a Beta value of 1.00 over the last decade. That's average for mutual funds, and most will lie between 0.5 and 2.00 (with a higher Beta value being more risky). Be wary of those outside that range. You can also look at the biggest 1-year drop that fund has had, as well as a few other tidbits to help you gauge whether or not the fund may be good for your level of risk. As you age, you should be taking on less risk, as you will have less time to recover if you get hit hard by a downturn.

5. Another way to manage risk is to manage what kind of stocks you invest in. A small startup has a lot more risk, and a lot more return, than a giant like Johnson&Johnson that's been chugging along for a hundred years or something. If you're looking for funds on a site like Yahoo, Vanguard, or Morningstar, you can read a bit about the fund's goal. Here's some of the lingo you might see:

Growth = no dividends. You will get your money when you sell that stock, not before. Usually riskier.

Value = opposite of growth. The fund will periodically pay you a small amount. Usually safer.

Blend = Mix of growth and value stocks

Large Cap (or "blue chip") = Huge megacorps, generally worth > $10 billion. Lower risk

Mid Cap = $2 to $10 billion

Small Cap = < $2 billion. higher risk.

Being able to make sense of beta values, % equity (the amount in stocks. Remember the ole 100-Your age thing?), annual return, fund goals, and what exactly a "large cap" fund means can really help you invest more wisely for your own personal needs. Or, again, just go with an asset allocation fund.

6. Now that we've talked about risk, let's talk about what you're getting for that increased risk. While year-to-year you might see a 30% return on your investments, or -30%, for the last 100 years the average rate of return has been about 7 or 8%. Your risk is practically none, and funds outperform all of the "safer" options. Now, you can get hammered if you're very close to retirement and still heavily invested in risky mutual funds, but that is easily avoidable, as we talked about.

I hope this helped!

Tl;dr: Don't be afraid of mutual funds or the stock market.

Look at the top holdings for SCHX. This is just the top 10, there are another 740 stocks after this.

Company | Symbol | Percentage -|-|- Apple Inc.|AAPL|3.52 Microsoft Corporation|MSFT|1.95 Exxon Mobil Corporation Common |XOM|1.92 Johnson & Johnson Common Stock|JNJ|1.51 Berkshire Hathaway Inc Class B|BRK.B|1.34 General Electric Company Common|GE|1.32 Wells Fargo & Company Common St|WFC|1.28 Procter & Gamble Company (The) |PG|1.21 JP Morgan Chase & Co. Common St|JPM|1.12 Verizon Communications Inc. Com|VZ|1.04

Now, let's do the same for VOO.

Company | Symbol | Percentage -|-|- Apple Inc.|AAPL|3.85 Microsoft Corporation|MSFT|2.13 Exxon Mobil Corporation Common |XOM|2.09 Johnson & Johnson Common Stock|JNJ|1.65 General Electric Company Common|GE|1.44 Wells Fargo & Company Common St|WFC|1.40 Berkshire Hathaway Inc Class B|BRK.B|1.35 Procter & Gamble Company (The) |PG|1.32 JP Morgan Chase & Co. Common St|JPM|1.22 Verizon Communications Inc. Com|VZ|1.13

They look pretty similar, don't they?

When you buy $1000 (or whatever amount) of these ETFs, you're indirectly buying shares in these companies. $1000 buys the same amount of those underlying companies. The price is arbitrary.

You can also see the effect of holding additional stocks. Because SCHX holds an additional 250 stocks, it is less concentrated in Apple which is a good thing. If you look at a US Total Stock Market index fund like SCHB, it is even less concentrated in Apple (just 3.13%) because it contains several thousand stocks instead of just 500 or 750.

I already gave you the trick....

VFIAX tracks 500 U.S. equities. These are companies such as Apple, Exxon Mobile, Johnson & Johnson. Back in 2008/2009, 2001, or a lot of other times these companies went down in value at the same time. Maybe not 100% of them but let's say 80% of them did. To give an example of a U.S. bonds I am going to give you a very poor example because it shows exactly what I am talking about... It is a poor example because in reality most bond funds do not work this way despite what most people think... Look at https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1405299371396&chddm=982192&chls=IntervalBasedLine&cmpto=NYSEARCA:EDV&cmptdms=0&q=NYSEARCA:SPY&ntsp=0&ei=qCrDU4jBIcSNqQGCnYC4AQ See how SPY (the S&P 500 index which is very similar to VFIAX) went heavily down and at the same time EDV went up? EDV as a negative correlation to SPY historically: more often than not if SPY goes up then EDV goes down and visa versa. It is not an exact -1 correlation, it is -.21.

Now a more commonly used bond fund would be BND. https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1405299371396&chddm=982192&chls=IntervalBasedLine&cmpto=NYSEARCA:BND&cmptdms=0&q=NYSEARCA:SPY&ntsp=0&ei=qCrDU4jBIcSNqQGCnYC4AQ BND did have an initial slight drop from +1.26% to -6%, however it quickly then recovered to +5% while SPY stayed negative. This is much closer to a 0 correlation, SPY went up and down BND had some minor changes but nothing major and not really in opposite or same as SPY. The reason I personally do not utilize BND is that I want a negative correlation to SPY and BND has almost no growth over time which it makes up for with a 3% yield normally, it is 2.56% yield right now.

Trying to use the recent 2001 and 2008 for international or REIT does not work as well as it normally does. REIT is real estate, which obviously is the cause of the recent market crash which took down both U.S. and international equity. The idea used to be that if something happens in U.S. (such as internet bubble or any other market bubble popping) that UK, France, China, etc would not be seriously affected and if anything might actually go up as U.S. investors move their money to other markets. That explains the international one, as to REIT most things which affect U.S. stock prices do not affect REIT the same. Remember, REITs are real estate why should these be affected by Tesla or google? REITs are traded on U.S. stock market just as stocks are, yet they move to a different beat.

Finally, emerging and developed also march to different beats from each other. At that point we are talking about totally different countries, some of them are more stable first world countries while others are potentially warring states. I believe that the idea is that emerging will grow faster than developed over time but it is significantly more risky.

So basically, the 5 fund portfolio I mentioned previously:

U.S. equity
U.S. bonds
U.S. REIT
International developed
International emerging

Has most of the entire market. The one main thing missing would be commodities, but most people do not bother with these just like most people do not bother literally buying a bar of gold as an investment: it is just an item there is no production involved.

Okay, based on your previous responses, it seems like you have a bit of confusion with some of these terms and how to apply them. I'll try to ELI5 it for you with a few basics.

There are many online brokerages which will allow you to buy and sell different investments. The most popular tend to be Vanguard, Fidelity, ETrade, Schwab, etc. Once you transfer some money in, you're ready to begin.

I would recommend doing some quick Google research on the following items: "ETF vs Mutual Fund", "diversification", and "expense ratio".

Your subject mentions purchasing a single company's stock and just letting it sit. A few other commenters have pointed out that there is perhaps a better strategy for you, one that involves diversification.

Let's say you purchase a single company, perhaps Boeing. You put all of your money into Boeing and hope that it goes up. From a risk/reward perspective, this can be tricky. If Boeing starts doing poorly as a company, or even the airline industry as a whole, your investment will be adversely affected. Of course, the opposite could happen as well: the company announces fantastic earnings and the stock goes straight up. The point is that it's very very difficult to accurately predict what's going to happen.

I work at a hedge fund and sit in front of financial data all day long. I have access to information sources that the average investor doesn't have, and even then, I am very reluctant to try to pick out single companies and invest in them.

As an alternative, many investors, myself included, like to invest in ETFs, which stands for Exchange Traded Funds. These are specially designed bundles of various investments, such as stocks or bonds, that can be traded as a single entity.

These ETFs typically track an index, like the S&P 500 or the Dow. They can also track subindices like a group of real estate stocks, airlines, gas companies, etc. You can get very broad or very specific ETFs depending on what you're looking for.

Here's the big advantage of these ETFs: diversification. As others in this thread have alluded to, if you're not interested in doing a tremendous amount of work researching companies and crunching the numbers in balance sheets and behind-the-scenes fundamental data, your best option is to purchase an ETF which encompasses many different companies for you.

One such ETF, SPY, is like a pie. Baked into that pie is a bit of all 500 companies which make up the S&P 500 index... so you get a little bit of Apple, Exxon, Microsoft, Johnson and Johnson, GE... and all of the other constituents of the index. Our sample company Boeing is in there too. When you buy a single share of the SPY "pie", you're getting a tiny bit of all of those companies in there. If something good happens to Boeing, you'll benefit. But you'll also benefit if something good happens to Facebook, Wal Mart, Google, Amazon, or McDonald's.

For some more additional reading, take a look at how the term "expense ratio" applies to ETFs and mutual funds; some ETFs can have extremely low expense ratios, which means that you don't pay as much to the people who manage the investment for you and you can keep more of that money in your pocket.

If you're truly interested in a single investment, you could do much worse than picking an ETF like SPY.

Q1 2011 Profit Margins - Exxon 9.34%, Chevron: 10.29%, Conoco: 5.20, BP: 8.07, Shell: 6.74, AT&T: 10.91, GS: 6.66, MSFT: 31.85, GOOG: 20.97, Ford: 7.7, GM: 3.8, Verizon: 5.33, Bankomerica: 5.3, Citi: 11.67, Walmart: 5.19, Monsanto: 24.63, Dow: 4.24, Johnson & Johnson: 21.49, Pfizer: 13.46, Apple: 24.27, Procter & Gamble: 14.20, JPMorgan: 17.86, Honda: 2.01, Target: 5.01, AstraZeneca: 35.06, WellsFargo: 16.21, Allstate: 6.41, Prudential: 5.97, GE: 8.73, 3M: 14.79