3-00 Chapter 3: Making Your First Trade
Now that we covered the basics of different types of investments and why prices move, it is time to start “Learn by doing” and make your first trades. Best of all, you have your practice brokerage account to use, so you can try out your first investing strategies on real stocks with real prices, but with virtual money!
This chapter contains the information you need to be a player, not a spectator, in the financial markets. Whether you are investing $100 or $100,000, we will cover the core concepts you need to start building your stock portfolio, how to choose your first stocks, how to make trades effectively (there is more to it than just “buy or sell”), and how to set up a portfolio you can “set and forget” – not obsess over investing news on a daily basis.
Later chapters will cover more of the details on how to choose stocks and conduct detailed research, but we feel that in order for these to really sink in, it is important to get your feet wet and see how it works. Don’t worry too much about making mistakes with your first few trades – you’re a beginner and that is all part of the process.