It may seem overwhelming to keep up with
the stock markets; but, if you fail to do so, you will be forced to solely rely
upon the opinions of others in order to make your investment decisions. Since
your nest egg is so crucial to your future, it does not make sense to blindly
follow the advice of any one person. Instead, the following tips are a good
place to start for any investor looking to take charge of their own finances
and learn to follow the markets.
Seek Multiple Sources and Be an Elephant –
One of the main problems faced by beginner investors is the sheer volume of
information about multiple markets that sell thousands of stocks. Fortunately,
technology provides multiple means of getting information from a variety of
sources. It is important to have a very long memory, even if you need to take
some notes on the investment advice and information on market conditions that
you receive. Over time, you are bound to find some wholly unreliable sources
that you remove from your list, but what remains should be reputable sources
whom you can rely upon for future investment decisions.
Be Politically and Economically Savvy –
Politics and the choices, regulations and laws made by governments are going to
impact your investments. Right now, the trade war and tariffs are having a
devastating impact on farmers in the U.S. We may encounter information from
sources that may not be telling us the whole truth because they are too busy
supporting the politics on either side rather than focusing on the facts and
figures of the situation.
Seek a variety of sources of information on local, state, national and
international news. Be the elephant with a long memory. If any of your sources
lie to you, seek a different publication whom you can trust. Your hard-earned
money is too important to risk on the advice of unreliable sources.
RSS Feeds –
When you cull things down to your ideal news sources, you can view them in one
location at a glance in an RSS feed. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Feedly is a good RSS feed source. You just click on the RSS symbol
on the page of your chosen news source and paste the link into Feedly or
another RSS reader. You can also place all of your investment blogs and other
valued sources of market information into the reader. The news aggregator lets
you see at a glance your news content from multiple sources. You can click on
the ones you find interesting. This saves a great deal of time compared with
manually checking each source daily for new information.
Google Alerts –
If certain topics affect your investments, you can set alerts that will troll
the web and notify you of new information that comes up on those topics. Investopedia
suggests using Google Alerts for this purpose. Google will send you an email
whenever a new instance of the topic comes up.
For example, if you are an investor in Uber, you might want to keep track of
the latest on the state of California’s fight with Uber, Lyft and many
companies in the gig economy that would like to keep the majority of their
workers classed as freelancers. There is a new law, AB 5, that will take effect
in California in 2020 and seeks to reclassify these workers, but Uber and Lyft
are fighting it tooth and nail. Google will automatically send you an email
with links when new information on the topic emerges.
Individual Companies –
When you are tracking information on individual companies and their
performance, you can simultaneously have a Google Alert with the company’s name
as your keyword, a Feedly RSS feed from their website or Facebook page, and
stay abreast of their Twitter feed. You may want to have keywords set in your
Google Alert for the conditions under which you will sell the stock or when you
will buy it.
In our Uber example, if they cannot get enough signatures for their proposed
California ballot initiative to change the new California labor law, maybe you
would sell the stock, since they will have to pay 30 percent more in labor
costs under the new law. Being notified immediately if this comes true could
save you thousands, depending on the size of your investment.
Investing Education, Vlogs, Blogs and Podcasts –
There is so much out there for investors in terms of general investing
information, vlogs, blogs and podcasts. While these privatized sources of
information may be more vulnerable to misinformation, a savvy investor can
track the performance history of those running the blog and use this to
determine their credibility.
General Investing Education –
If you would like to take a college-level beginning investor course taught by
one of the finest universities in Europe, Coursera
has a course that takes three months and an eight hour investment of time each
week. The goal of the course is to teach you to be able to understand the
markets, manage your own investment portfolio and focus upon long-term gains.
Current Market Conditions Vlogs –
There are many vlogs on YouTube that keep people apprised of the changing
market conditions. You can get an informed analysis from Fisher Investments in the form of vlogs called “Market Insights” and podcasts
that tend to run about 20 minutes called the “Market Insights Podcast.” Of
course, you can subscribe to vlogs on YouTube and get notifications when new
videos are uploaded.
Tracking Account –
If you are just getting your feet wet, you will likely want to register with a
company that provides a tracking account. You can place investments into the
tracking account that you have not actually purchased but are considering. Many
tracking accounts allow you to receive email updates when an investment reaches
certain high and low values.
Today, it is much easier for the average investor to make well-reasoned stock
choices. The secret is to automate and aggregate everything you need into just
a few places to check each day. Let your tools do the heavy lifting for you!
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