Can you really make a lot of money off the Stock Market?
I recently graduated from high school and as part of the requirement to walk was to take a economics class. In that class we had to do a stock market simulation, www.stockmarketgame.org (uses real time data ie: stock market, tickers, graphs, etc), and I did very well (or atleast I think I did, placed 2nd in Northern California). We were given $100,000 to invest with for a 10 week period. The 10 week period was between February 20th to May 1st. As some of you know, the market was still a little on the low side but things were picking up. I didn't invest all $100,000 but more like $65,000. I made some stupid choices when the simulation first started (didn't know what I was doing, buying and selling expensive stocks mainly) and ended up losing almost half my portfolio. I really can't recall most of the companies I invested in but some of the ones that stood out were ING GROEP NV, BioMed Realty Trust, Inc., Bank of America Corporation, and ING Groep N.V.. These companies were the ones that basically brought in most of the money and rebuilt my portfolio. By the end of the 10 week period, my portfolio closed in at $168,000 but at one point, was nearly $200,000. I'm still a little skeptical about the stock market although. Can you really make this kind of money? Should I really start investing? Can you really make a lot of money off the market? Have any one of you out there in the world made MAD money? Any investment tips would be helpful. Thanks in advance. -Chan Saelee (soon to be airman, future businessman)
My parents don't let me invest my own hard earned money into stocks?
I am a 18 year old boy and have over $12,000 saved up in the bank from working for 3 years at a supermarket during my high school years and currently still work there right now while in college. Ever since high school i have had an interest in the stock market and the exchange of trillions of dollars through the market from ifferent investors and companies. I watch the finance channel every day, read investing and financial books during my spare time and look at news and headlines of comapnies to see what stocks are expecting spikes and dips in the market. I specifically want to take maybe 1k or less of my money to trade with penny stocks for short term profits opposed to investing in larger companies for my retirement. I just want to get the feel of investing and trading with my own money since i have a interest in it. I am a business student in college and would love to invest into stocks and trade for some profits and try to see how it is and get experience at such a young age. However while i tried explaining all this to my parents that look down on wall street and investing in stocks or any investments for that matter. They were born in a society were they didn't get an education and were told to get a job and just save your money and never make any risky investments with it. they were taught just to be safe in life and not take risks. I was raised by these very beliefs until i was old and wise enough to realize that you have to take risks in life to become successful.
How much money could you make by investing in stocks?
As an example, say you buy 100 shares of a stock at $50. That costs you $5000. A while later, the stock is trading at $60, so you decide to sell. The sale of 100 shares at $60 gives you $6000. So you've made a profit of $1000, or 20%. Subtract from that your broker's commissions. And you'll also owe tax on your profit. Where people get into trouble is when they panic and sell for a loss. Say you buy a risky stock, and a few days later, it's down 10%, so you sell. You think "hey, it's only 10%. I can make that back." But then the same thing happens on another stock, and again and again. If you lose 10%, 10 times in a row, that's your entire account. There are many stocks that have great long-term potential, but could potentially drop 10 to 50% before going back up. It's hard to stomach seeing your balance get cut in half. So you should only invest money that you can afford to lose; only if you have a good job that's paying the bills.
I don't understand the stock market at ALL. Can someone explain?
Haha yeah, that is definitely and accurate description. Here's what's going on. Stock markets are where people buy and sell stocks. What are stocks? Businesses can sell "shares" or "stock" in their company. If you own a "share" you own a little part of their company. Say they issue 1 million shares and you buy one. You now own 1 millionth of that company (and in case you're curious a company will try to retain at least 51% of it's shares, so no one can buy enough shares to control them, although that does happen and yeah that's how companies get taken over). Anyway, once you buy a "share" or many "shares" in a company you can sell them to other people, which is great, because the value of that share can change. The place where people buy and sell shares is called a "stock market". There are lots of them, they have them all over the world but the biggest most important one where American stocks are bought and sold is called the New York Stock Exchange, and it's on Wall Street, of course in New York City. All those people crowded everywhere yelling are basically buying and selling "stocks" They're always really frantic because stock prices change very rapidly, and people are making transactions involving millions of dollars all the time. You're always trying to buy them cheap and sell them for as much as you can, it's very stressful stuff. Now, there are also these things called bonds, or are closely related to them. Bonds are just loans. If you loan someone money, and you collect interest on that loan, you can actually sell the rights to get the principal (the amount you're owed) and the interest, to someone else. Now, the value of a loan can actually change, and that's really complicated, and it's for a different yahoo questions, but people buy and sell those in many different ways on the stock market. Also, you can sell an option, which is a contract to buy a stock, bond, anything, even just barrels of oil, at a specific time for a specific price. These contracts called futures, options, they have lots of names, have changing values, and they get bought and sold in a stock market. There are also fancy ways of packaging stocks and bonds and even different amounts of currency from all over the world that get bought and sold on the stock market. It can get very complicated, but if you're still curious, ask me a question about it any time.
I have lost around 2 lacs in stock market now i want to recover it how i can recover it?
Dear Sanjay, Please invest your fund in long term capital's, i suggest that plz purchase hindalco, mahindra satyam's share's for approx 3 yerars and above.
In the stock market, is your gain another person's loss?
Let me explain it in a very simple way. Think of a mountain made of very same identical packets(each packet contains a Rupee). Now the thing is that public wants to sit on the bigger or the fastest growing mountain to Show Off. So what is the next thing workers(Traders) will do if they saw American mountain growing much faster compared to Indian mountain, they will take their packets(money) and rush to the American mountain, takes a place and sits there expecting that the mountain will rise. They have actually booked their profit in Indian mountain and now headed to Americans. As per theories, amount of money should be constant(In terms of global money). The people who ran away from Indian mountain did crashed the Indian mountain because they took their packets off, but some of those people rushing towards America has the money which has been out-flowed in terms of their profits. The profit booking done by one can be equal to loss booked by one or equivalent(amount of share/ amount of money) guys loss booked. Like if a guy is a big one having 100 rs CAN consume 50% wealth of 10 guys with 10 rs.Considering the law and assuming that the money around the globe in stock market remains same(public who sold their shares is buying other shares), the money is constant, its just, the crash occurred in Indian mountain is due to profit booking done by the traders in India.