How to Invest in Stocks

Investing in stocks, regardless if it’s Google or Snapchat is surprisingly easy, and it’s one of the only ways to grow your assets.

To put the power of investing in perspective, had you opened up a brokerage account and invested $10,000 in the S&P 500 in 2010, you’d have $27,210 today!

Why Invest in Stocks?

Investing in stocks is one of the ways the rich keep getting richer (it’s also a lot easier to invest in stocks than you might think. Regardless of the amount of cash you have saved, if you’re not putting your cash to work by investing it, history proves you will miss out over time.

To put it simply, investing in stocks offers a way to earn income without working. This concept sounds strange at first, but, when you think about it, money is a tool. At a certain point, when you accumulate enough money, you no longer have to trade your time for money. You can trade your money for more money.

This is the “secret” to building serious wealth. Don’t believe me? Just ask Warren Buffett, a man who has made $89 billion from investing his money over the course of his life. If you have a long-term time horizon, and aren’t worried about short-term price fluctuations, investing enables you to grow your assets…sometimes exponentially. For example, if you buy $10,000 worth of Starbucks stock, and Starbucks moves 30% higher, you’ll make $3,000 by doing nothing.

Step #1: Opening an Account

The first thing you’ll have to do before you can invest in stocks is open an online brokerage account.

All stock and ETF trades start at just $5.00 with free closing trades (so the effective commission is $2.50). Plus, every tastyworks client gets access to robust trading platforms, and tastyworks never charges any inactivity or maintenance fees.

This means it’s totally free to open an account with tastyworks. Many consumer banks in the US charge customers monthly fees just to maintain an account. The fact that it’s totally free at tastyworks is pretty awesome.

Step #2: Finding Winning Stocks to Invest In

Simply put, Motley Fool Stock Advisor helps take the uncertainty out of investing.

Although you certainly don’t have to sign up for Motley Fool to start investing in stocks, investing without signing up is like throwing darts with your eyes closes and hoping to hit a bullseye.

Once your tastyworks account is opened and funded, and you’re ready to trade, consider taking a look at some of these popular stocks in 2019.

Ticker Symbol	Popular Because
AVGR	Up 300% year-to-date, clinical stage medical device company
SNAP	Up 101.7% year-to-date, exciting recent growth and potential increased monetization opportunities
GRPN	Very popular online booking and discount coupon service with bullish analysts ratings
AVEO	Biotechnology company focused on late stage oncology treatment solutions

At the end of the day, you should only invest in stocks that you want to be a part owner in. Some investors only invest in companies that they are familiar with and understand, like Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc.

Step #3: Making the Trades

Once you’ve entered the ticker symbol name into tastyworks’ platform, real-time prices and buttons to buy and sell the stock will appear.

The next decision you need to make is how many shares you want to purchase. This will be your fractional ownership in the company. The exact number of shares to purchase is entirely up to you. You can buy 1 share or 1,000,000 shares. You’re only limited by the funds you have available. Tastyworks’ system, thankfully, won’t let you accidentally purchase too many shares relative to your account value. As a general rule of thumb, most investors never put more than 10% of their available funds into a single stock. So if you have $1,000 and a stock is $50 per share, you might want to only buy a few shares, at least until you become comfortable with investing.

When it comes to placing orders, experts prefer to use “limit” orders, because you get to decide what price your trade will execute at. A “market” order will execute your order at the current market price. This is sort of like buying a house without looking at the offering price; for stocks, market orders are only useful if you don’t care about the short-term price movements and just want to own the stock. After submitting your “limit” order (the recommended limit order price for each stock is also specified in Stock Advisor alerts), you’ll receive a confirmation of your investment from and you’ll officially be an investor!

If you want to sell your investment and close out your position, all you have to do is click on your position in your account and click “sell”. Of course, if you need help with anything in this process, tastyworks customer service is ready to over the phone.

About Opening a Brokerage Account

Final Thoughts

In the world of finance, investing is always considered somewhat risky, but it’s also highly lucrative. As the old saying goes, “fortunes favor the bold.”

At the end of the day, buying stocks and investing is planning for your financial future. Regardless of the amount of cash you have in your bank account, if it’s just sitting there, it’s not doing anything for you. Instead of trading their time for money, financially savvy people trade their money for more money by investing in stocks. Think about it!

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