Way before trading comes into picture, you have to sturdy your mind. It is essentially a mind game. Unlike work, where you go and do a routine work, trading is something where everyone is coming to work not to mention robots, super computers, politicians, and professionals and businessmen and government with massive resources and law at their disposals. Compared to that, you the teeny tine investor, armed with few blogs and books, supposed divine prudence and assumed mental and emotional strength with often times limited money at disposal. I had jotted down some points from various books and think it might help you too in case you are getting started.
Here it goes. It is unformatted and decidedly random and back of the napkin style writing as that is how it is when it is first written.
“… is it that comes to ur mind when u r thinking of investing in stocks (not mfs)? money coming and going lots of tension periodic updating of stocks and stock ticker and other information ,, keeping tabs …. what do u want to be short term or long term investor ? which one is good? what are ur compromises? what is the disaster recovery program? what is the strategies and methodologies that are going to be used ? what is the algorithm ? how much internet time to devote? how frequently to visit the broker? can it be made fuzzy free ? selling at the right moment ? some stocks can be used to park money some used for good dividends when to enter the market and when to exit ? should we follow the same SIP approach as we did for MF ? or is it combination of all ? is it the mixture and it becomes so hard to comprehend that things get out of control? lots of articles also read on the same. there are also lots of sites providing and recommending about the various companies and so on …. how much should we listen and how much to the gut feel is it worth making a huge fuss over? is it good to have few good stocks rather than massive uncontrollable number of unheard companies do u really want to lose money and here is where the risk profile comes to picture. how much can u really afford to lose before the trip takes over ? information is an imp aspect here. Take it as an input and process something that gives u an output which goes on to redefine the process. so it would operate just like a mf operates. should we build a system so strong to crack or wreck or fail? obviosly returns do matter and just investing in the big ones and realising average gains wont be that good. the returns from stock will have strong competition from mfs. remember this point. We can also do an outsource of stocks to the broker. good knowledgeable broker. look at the charges and then plunge into it. Categorisation: we can also categorise based on the investment horizons like long term short term and durations … buy them (stocks) when everyone wants to sell, and sell them when everyone wants to buy. old wisdom but then how does it work ? There are sector wise portfolio building and also the company wise. The company site gives info about the company future and from this it can be guesstimated to arrive at the right amt to be put in there. The sites gives u info abt how much the good performing funds have put in various cos. This also gives u info abt the companies as the amcs must have done some r&d. Top down: Bird view Bottom up: worm view Tech anal: statistically predict the curve and invest it. Investors should not just study individual stocks but look at the overall economy and try to gauge the market Invest in learning. read research reports. information gathering period. Look behind the scenes. if real estate is booming so will ceramics and paints and cements. Dividend is the key: companies with good dividend record Periodic updating of stocks and stock ticker and other information ,, keeping tabs …. this is inevitable for short term stocks. FAQs: What to buy list and what to sell list? ofcourse of good cos. if it has potential to appreciate more over long term hold on. So the question is when to buy and when to sell? Are you going to buy at high? no. that is too much risk taking. are you going to sell low? nope. So wait till prices drop and then buy and sell only when high. pretty obvious.
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