3-09 Resources

Summary

Ok new investor, you should be ready to begin. You can now leave the bleachers, put on a uniform, cross the white lines, and play. Stay focused, positive, and realistic. You might not make the Majors right away, but you can enter the investment world armed with solid knowledge, upon which you can expand by practice and repetition at a virtual trading simulation.

Glossary

Buy on Margin:
Borrowing money from your broker to buy stock.
Dividend Yield:
The annual dividend amount divided by the current stock price.
GTC Order:
A Good-Till-Cancelled order stays in effect until the order fills or it is cancelled by the account holder.
Limit Order:
An order that only executes when the target price has been reached.
Market Order:
An order that executes immediately at the best available price.
Sell Short:
Borrowing shares from your broker to sell a stock that you don’t own with the hope of the price going down so that you can then buy the shares back at a lower price and return them to your broker.
Stop Loss Order:
An order to sell a stock below the current price so that if the stock price starts to fall you will sell and limit your losses.

Further Reading

Exercise

If you haven’t done so yet, go to your virtual account and make at least 6 trades:

  • Place a market order and see if it gets filled quickly
  • Place a buy limit order to below the current market price of a stock and see if and when it gets filled.
  • Place some of these orders as day orders and some as GTC.
  • Place a stop loss order on one of the stocks that you have bought.
  • Place a limit sell on one of your stocks that you have bought.
  • Don’t forget to short a stock that you think is overpriced.

Don’t worry if you haven’t done a lot of research for your stocks at this point. This is just for the practice of looking up ticker symbols and placing orders.