Stock investing strategy guide (full sample)
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About this content
Find out how putting money into various types of stocks can help you meet your investment and financial goals. This article explores how investors can use different types of investing to build wealth and make the most of their money. It includes information on the benefits, drawbacks, returns, and other aspects of investing in stocks. It covers growth investing, value investing, and income investing.
Areas of expertise
Different types of stock investing strategies
Growth stock investments
Growth investing is an approach in which you invest in companies that you believe will grow significantly. This means that the expected future performance (together with the share price) of the business will outpace the market. Growth investing is one of the riskiest types of stock investing as it is more prone to emotion and investor sentiment about a business.
Why would growth stock investing be right for you?
Growth stock will let you invest in:
New businesses that are coming into the market for the first time (via an initial public offering, or IPO).
Companies that are experiencing rapid growth due to innovations, new products, or services.
Companies that aren't necessarily leaders in their sectors or industries.
Questionable financial health - growth businesses often use debt to finance their expansion.
Growth businesses do not often pay dividends as they reinvest profits into growth.
Potentially excellent prospects.
What are the most important fundamental factors for growth investing?
These types of companies tend to meet the following criteria:
Price/Earnings (P/E) ratio - The price/earnings ratio of growth businesses tends to be fairly high, compared to their industry or sector.
Debt and equity - Growth businesses often have high debt.
Price/Earnings Growth (PEG) - Aim for a PEG that is much better than average for the industry or sector.
Earnings growth rate - You are looking for market-beating growth rates, ahead of competitors.
Return on Equity (ROE) - Return on equity might be lower than expected as more of a company's profits are reinvested for future growth.
What are some examples of growth stocks?
Growth stocks can change rapidly, but companies that have seen substantial growth in recent years include Facebook, Tesla, and Netflix. Growth stocks are often found in the tech sector.
When should you sell this type of investment?
Growth stocks are influenced more by emotion and sentiment than other types of stock. As you're not likely to be receiving an interim return via dividends, think carefully about when you want to sell the stock based on increases in the share price. Growth stocks can gain (and lose) value quickly, and you might want to lock in those gains by selling the stock once it reaches a target price.
What are your expected returns?
Growth stocks are among the most unpredictable investments. Share prices can be extremely volatile, so you'll want to keep a close eye on your stocks to lock in gains.
Growth stocks can be overvalued; they are a favorite of pundits and news channels looking for the "next big thing," so the hype level can be high.
The money you make from growth stocks will be mainly realized through gains in the share price rather than dividends. This means that you'll tend to get the best return on these stocks when you sell them.
What are the drawbacks of growth investing?
Ruled by emotion and sentiment - Growth stocks are the type of stocks that regularly make financial news for large gains and losses. They fall into and out of favor with investors are prone to being popular and then dropped quickly.
Difficult to separate fact from hype - Looking at a growth stock objectively can be difficult.
The stock price on newly launched (IPO) stocks can take a while to normalize and will often fall in value in the few months following an IPO as the euphoria fades and financial realities set in.
Remember that you should diversify your growth investing by putting money into various stocks across different industries and diversifying your portfolio with other styles of investment.
Growth stocks can be extremely volatile on a day-to-day, week-to-week, and month-to-month basis.
Value stock investments
Find out how putting money into value stocks can help you meet your investment and financial goals. This article explores how investors can use value investing to build wealth and make the most of their money. It includes information on the benefits, drawbacks, returns, and other aspects of investing in value stocks.
Value investing is an approach that invests in unloved, undervalued businesses in the hope of making a good capital return. It tends to require more research to uncover stocks that other investors might have overlooked.
Why would value stock investing be right for you?
Value stock will let you invest in:
Businesses that are undervalued or overlooked by other investors and the market.
Companies that aren't necessarily leaders in their sectors or industries.
Reasonable financial health.
Undervalued businesses may or may not pay dividends.
Growth may be depressed or underwhelming in the short to medium term.
Good prospects.
What are the most important fundamental factors for value investing?
These types of companies tend to meet the following criteria:
Market cap - You don't tend to find many value stocks among the biggest companies; those businesses are generally well understood, with a share price to match.
Price / Earnings (P/E) ratio - The price/earnings ratio of value businesses tends to be low; they can be slow-growing, but make money over time. Remember to compare P/E within industries and sectors, as this ratio is very sensitive to the field the business operates in.
Debt and equity - You'll want to invest in value businesses that don't have enormous amounts of debt financing their growth; large debt means high interest payments, which reduces the potential value of the business.
Price / Earnings Growth (PEG) - Aim for a PEG that is better than average for the industry or sector.
Return on Investment (ROI) - Look for a return on investment that's ahead of the industry or sector average.
When should you sell this type of investment?
Like most other investments, it's best to hold value stocks for extended periods if you want to see the best returns. It's also worth comparing value stocks against their peers on a regular basis. As the markets shift, bargains can appear, so you might want to review for value stocks on a quarterly or annual basis.
What are your expected returns?
Value stocks are among the more unpredictable investments. These stocks might have low share prices for a reason, so do your research carefully.
The money you make from value stocks will be mainly realized through gains in the share price, rather than dividends. This means that you'll tend to get the best return on these stocks when you sell them.
What are the drawbacks of value investing?
Value investing is inherently riskier than other types of investing, as it assumes that you know something about a company's value that others don't.
Remember that you should diversify your value investing by putting money into various stocks across different industries and diversifying your portfolio with other styles of investment.
Income stock investments
Find out how putting money into income stocks can help you meet your investment and financial goals. This article explores how investors can use income investing to build wealth and make the most of their money. It includes information on the benefits, drawbacks, returns, and other aspects of investing in income stocks.
Income investing is an investment approach that puts your money into businesses that pay a reliable, above-average dividend. It focuses more on the interim returns (dividends) that you get through the life of your investment, rather than capital growth in the share price.
Why would income stock investing be right for me?
Income stock will let you invest in:
Businesses with a good profit margin that pay higher-than-average dividends.
Robust financial health with good revenues and earnings.
A proven history and safe prospects.
What are the most important fundamental factors for income investing?
These types of companies tend to meet the following criteria:
Revenue - A healthy income; good dividend payers tend to have healthy, reliable revenues.
Market cap - Income stocks can be large, mid or small cap; it's the dividend yield that matters more than the overall size of the company.
Earnings and growth - Good profitability with reliable or slightly above-average year-on-year growth.
Dividend yield - A higher-than-average dividend yield; you're aiming for a minimum of 3-3.5%.
Earnings Per Share (EPS) - Ahead of or level with their competitors.
Return on Investment (ROI) - Ahead of their competitors.
What are some examples of income stocks?
High dividend-paying stocks include AT&T, Chevron, GlaxoSmithKline, Rio Tinto, Duke Energy, and Las Vegas Sands.
When should you sell this type of investment?
The purpose of income stocks is to provide you with a reliable cash flow via dividend payments, year after year. Unless you have a pressing need to sell these stocks, you can keep investments in income shares indefinitely and enjoy the income from the dividends.
What are your expected returns?
Stocks vary significantly in performance, depending on the company, industry, sector, and other market values.
Investments in income stocks are meant to produce dividend returns ahead of the market average.
Because you're likely to hold these stocks for an extended period, most of your realized income will be from dividend payments rather than capital gains.
What are the drawbacks of quality investing?
You should not invest in these types of businesses over the short or medium term as it is possible you will lose money.
Remember that you should diversify your investments by putting money into various stocks across different industries and diversifying your portfolio with other styles of investment.
Like any stock market investment, income stocks can be volatile on a day-to-day, week-to-week, and month-to-month basis.
How do you invest in growth, value, or income stocks?
You can easily invest directly into various types of stock through your online broker account.
Content originally written by Paul Maplesden, a freelance writer, and edited by me.
Cautionary investments - a guide and review (full sample)
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About this content
This guide covers various types of investments that you might want to think carefully about before you part with any money. In this guide, we’ll explore:
Algorithmic trading
Collectibles
Technical and swing trading
Selling stocks short
Initial Public Offerings
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Cautionary investments — A review
This guide covers various types of investments that you might want to think carefully about before you part with any money. In this guide, we’ll explore:
Algorithmic trading
Collectibles
Technical and swing trading
Selling stocks short
Initial Public Offerings
Algorithmic trading
Algorithmic trading and the people who practice it (known as "quants") use dedicated trading algorithms to buy and sell stocks automatically. These algorithms are programmed, tested, and tweaked on specialized trading platforms. When they are launched, they analyze the markets to find stocks that meet their criteria and then buy and sell them.
How does it work?
Investors and traders with computer coding knowledge can write specialized trading algorithms that identify stocks based on certain features (both fundamental and technical indicators). These algorithms are then back-tested on stock market data to see how they perform. They can then be launched into a live trading account where they will buy and sell stocks based on those criteria.
What are the risks?
Time investment and expertise - As you've guessed, it requires computer coding, math, investment, and trading knowledge to create algorithms that can perform well. Algo trading has a steep learning curve.
Lack of control - Because algorithms trade automatically, it takes control away from the investor, not something you really want to happen.
Historic results don't equal future results - A popular aspect of algo trading is back-testing the algorithm to see how it performs. Unfortunately, good past results don't guarantee good future ones.
Specialized platform - Algorithms need to be deployed on specialized software that links with a brokerage account.
Fees - Algo trading can involve relatively frequent buying and selling; broker commissions and transaction fees can eat up a lot of profit.
If you want to algo trade, what can you do?
Algo trading is not recommended for new investors.
You can algo trade through various software packages like NinjaTrader or retail investment algo platforms like Quantopian.
Collectibles including wine, art, and memorabilia
Investing doesn't have to involve stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments; some people invest in more tangible areas - including wine, art, antiques, autographs, books, and other memorabilia - in the hope they will increase in value.
How does it work?
An investor in collectibles will typically buy items that they hope will increase in value over time. They may hold these items themselves or they may be held on their behalf by a specialist broker. There are many different types of collectibles that an individual can choose to invest in, including:
Fine art by sculptors, painters, and other artists, both historic and modern.
Wine and liquor - Old and rare wine and liquor including whiskey, brandy, and port.
Memorabilia - Sports team memorabilia, uniforms and the like; signed photos and autographs of celebrities.
Books - First editions and other folios from writers.
Antiques - Beautiful and historic craftsmanship.
Other memorabilia - Early examples of important inventions and historic artifacts from other fields.
What are the risks?
Supply and demand market - The world of collectibles is based almost entirely on rarity and supply and demand; predicting what types of collectibles will significantly increase in value can be difficult.
Lack of liquidity - To make money on a collectible, you need to find someone willing to buy it from you. Unlike many other investments, it can be difficult to find a buyer, particularly one who wants to pay the price you are asking.
Capital outlay - Collectible investing can require large amounts of capital outlay to buy a good selection of high-quality collectibles; additionally, a dealer is normally putting a hefty markup of their own on the collectible when selling it to you.
No interim income - Unlike most investments, collectibles don't provide any interim income.
Unpredictable - It can be difficult to predict exactly which collectibles are going to increase in value substantially.
If you want to get involved with collectibles, what can you do?
Collectibles are not recommended for new investors.
There are specialized brokers, dealers, and traders in every type of collectible.
Technical and swing trading
Traditional stock investing relies on analyzing and understanding the fundamentals of a business (value, earnings, and other factors) to predict long-term growth. Technical trading (or swing trading) uses shorter-term, technical indicators to try to predict price movements over shorter periods. Swing traders typically hold stocks for a few days to a few weeks.
How does it work?
A swing trader will look at various technical indicators to help them decide if the stock is going to go up or down in price. There are dozens of these indicators (e.g., moving average, volume, Bollinger Bands, relative strength) that change on an hourly and daily basis. Investors will then attempt to use these indicators to buy into and sell out of stocks.
What are the risks?
Trading, not investing - Swing trading isn't investing; it's using short-term indicators to try to make money on relatively random stock movements. It can be very difficult to predict if prices are going to go up or down in the short term, making it difficult for a novice investor to make money with this type of trading.
A different way of thinking - Swing trading approaches stocks in a very different way. Rather than looking at reliable, fundamental, long-term indicators, they concentrate on short-term movements. This involves a whole new way of thinking, and new terminology.
Time-consuming - Like day trading, swing trading needs a lot of time and attention from the people who practice it.
Fees - Due to the relatively frequent buying and selling involved in swing trading, broker commissions and transaction fees can eat up a lot of profit.
If you want to swing trade, what can you do?
Swing trading is not recommended for new investors.
If you do want to swing trade, you can do it through your online broker account, but be aware of commissions and any other fees.
Selling stocks short
Investors normally count on stock prices increasing over time, but by selling stocks short, investors can profit from falling stock prices. In other words, as a company's share price falls, your return on that share increases.
How does it work?
Short-selling works through investors "borrowing" shares from their broker. You effectively sell the shares before owning them with the promise that you will buy them back in the future. If the price of the share falls, you receive the difference in value as profit. If the price rises, you will take a loss.
What are the risks?
Investing in failure - When you sell a stock short, you're hoping that the value of the stock and the company behind it will go down over time. This means that you're relying on the failure or weakness of the company; unfortunately, it can be as hard to pick losers as it is to pick winners.
No limit to how much you can lose - With a normal stock position (where you invest in the hope the price will go up) the most you could lose is your initial investment. When you sell short, you could lose more than you invest. For example, if you short sell 100 shares in Amazing Blue Widget Co. at $10 each ($1,000 borrowed) and the price then goes up to $30 each, you'd be liable for $3,000 worth of stock, a $2,000 loss.
Liable for dividends - With most stocks, you profit from dividends they pay out because you own the stock; this is not the case with short-selling. If the stock pays dividends, you are liable for them and your broker will deduct the total value of the dividend payment from your account.
Uptrend over time - The trend of the markets is to increase over time. This means that you're trying to pick a losing stock and wanting to buck the general trend of the overall market. This can be tough.
If you want to invest in short-selling stocks, what can you do?
Short-selling stocks is not recommended for new investors.
You can short-sell stocks through your online broker account; you simply put the stock position in as a "Sell" without buying the stocks first.
Remember that you could lose more than your original investment so make sure that you put "limit orders" in place to reduce your risk of this happening.
Initial Public Offerings
An IPO happens when a company launches its stocks onto the stock market for the first time (initial), allowing you (the public) to buy (the offering) into the business through investing in those stocks.
How does it work?
When a privately owned business grows and becomes profitable, it will often want to become public by offering stocks for sale on the open market. This allows the business to raise more money, increase its valuations, and reward the private investors who originally put money into the business.
What are the risks?
IPOs tend to be heavily marketed and over-hyped. This increases demand for the shares, drives the price up, and can overvalue shares in the business, which means that IPO investors often pay a premium to get in early.
The stock price on IPOs can take a while to normalize and will often fall in value in the few months following an IPO as the euphoria fades and financial realities set in. Strong businesses will continue to grow their share value over the medium to long term.
Because there are very little public earnings, valuation, or fundamental analyses available, it can be difficult to measure the true worth of a business at its IPO.
Be aware of the "lockup" period. Certain people who already hold shares in a business before an IPO have a lockup period during which they cannot sell their shares (generally three months to two years). Once this period expires, they can sell large numbers of their holdings which can affect the share price.
If you want to invest in IPOs, what can you do?
Don't buy into an IPO on the day of launch or for some time afterward; wait for the hype to die down and for the share price to normalize.
Carry out the same analysis and due diligence on IPOs as you would on any other business you're considering investing in.
Delay investing in a new business until you can get a good idea of earnings potential, history, and other essential and objective fundamental factors; you may also want to wait for the lockup period to expire.
You can normally invest in IPOs via your online broker account.
Content originally written by Paul Maplesden, a freelance writer, and edited by me.
Guide to reviewing your investments (full sample)
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Learn how to review your investments on a quarterly and annual basis by carrying out an investment review. This article shares some best practices that you can use to explore your investments and decide what to do with them. It also covers areas like taxes, fees, and financial goals.
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How to Review Your Investments
A vital part of investing is reviewing your investments on a regular basis and making changes to your portfolio based on how they are doing. This will help you keep your portfolio in good shape and ensures that you're still working towards your financial goals.
Reviews don't have to be time-consuming or complicated, and simple quarterly and annual reviews are good enough to keep you on track. Here are some simple principles that you can use on a quarterly and annual basis to manage your investments.
Carry out a quarterly review
Every three months, you should look at individual investments and your portfolio and ask the following questions.
How has each of your investments been doing over the last quarter and the last year?
Start by understanding the performance of each of your investments and your overall portfolio. You'll want to look at both capital gains / losses (the change in the purchase price of the investment) and any interim gains or dividends (money that's paid to you over the life of the investment). You can compare these returns to the market and to your financial goals and plans.
Do you need to make any changes to your under-performing investments?
If some of your investments have been under-performing, you might want to explore them in more depth, to understand why they are under-performing. If you're still confident in the investment, it's probably worth holding on to so that it can increase in value over time. If you've lost confidence in the investment, think about reducing your holding or selling it altogether.
Do you need to deal with dividends or other returns on your investments?
If you've received interim payments in your account, it's possible that they have been automatically reinvested. If they haven't, you'll need to decide if you want to withdraw them or reinvest them. In most cases, unless you need the money, it's better to reinvest.
Are you still on track with your financial goals?
Finally, as part of your quarterly review, look at your overall financial goals. Make any small tweaks or changes to your investments to keep you on track.
Carry out a more thorough yearly review
In addition to a quarterly review, it's also worth completing a more thorough annual review. When you're carrying out your annual review, ask yourself the following questions.
Do you understand what your tax burden is likely to be?
You'll probably need to pay taxes on any profit that you make on your investments, whether that's through interim payments or on any capital gains if you sell an investment. Talk to your accountant to learn how much tax you'll need to pay and ensure that you put enough aside to make the payment.
Your tax adviser or accountant can also give you advice on how to minimize your tax burden; for example, you'll normally have to pay a higher rate of tax if you sell an investment less than a year after buying it. It's also important to note that you could offset any losses that you've made against your gains.
Can you reduce the fees that you have to pay on your investments?
You'll often have to pay fees when you invest. Sometimes you'll need to pay them when you buy or sell investments, and sometimes they'll be levied on an annual basis as a "management fee" based on the value of your investments. Review the fees that you've paid over the last year and deduct them from your returns to see the impact they have had.
Go through each of the fees to understand if there are better options or other providers where you can pay lower fees. If there are, consider moving your investments.
Do you need to make any major changes to your portfolio?
Look at your risk profile and financial goals and compare this to your investment performance. See if you need to make changes to your portfolio to keep your likely risks and rewards in your comfort zone, this might involve re-balancing your portfolio by selling some investments and buying others so that you can reduce your risk.
Has an investment performed well enough that you might want to sell it?
If an investment has done well, you might want to consider selling it and realizing the gains. You should generally only do this if you need the money, if you're investing to a specific goal, or if you think you can get a better return elsewhere. Otherwise, continue to hold money in the investment and let it grow more over time.
Remember that if you sell an investment, you may have to pay transaction fees and taxes on any profits that you make.
Getting into the habit of carrying out regular investment reviews will help you meet your financial and life goals. With practice, you can complete each of the reviews in an hour or two. This will be time well spent, as the decisions you make can reduce your risk and make it easier to build your wealth.
Content originally written by Paul Maplesden, a freelance writer, and edited by me.
HR recruitment, assessment, and management content
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Copy editing and proofreading of manuals, training materials, and assessments for an HR recruitment and training business.
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I worked for this business for five years and edited hundreds of pieces of work.
They worked with financial businesses including banking and insurance.
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Robo-adviser investing short guide (full sample)
Copy editing and proofreading of a short guide to robo-advisers and whether they could work with your investing strategy.
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About this content
Find out how robo-advisers can help you meet your investment and financial goals. This article explores how investors can use robo-advisers to build wealth and make the most of their money. It includes information on the benefits, drawbacks, returns and other aspects of robo-advisers.
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Robo-adviser investing
Robo-advisers are specialized investing websites. They use feedback from you to automatically create a selection of funds that you can invest in over the medium to long-term. The only human input used in selecting these funds is provided by you, the recommendations come from an analysis by the robo-adviser platform.
Who should use robo-advisers?
Robo-advisers are useful if you like the idea of low-effort, automated investing. They take the human factor out of choosing investments and provide a diverse selection of funds to reduce your risk.
How does robo-adviser investing help you meet your financial goals?
Robo-adviser investing helps you meet your goals in the same way that any other long-term investments in various funds would - Growth, combined with an interim income. Ultimately, whether robo-adviser investing is right for you depends on what you think about your investments being selected for you automatically.
What are your expected returns?
Robo-adviser investing provides both capital growth (i.e. an overall increase in the fund values in your portfolio) together with paying a dividend.
As robo-adviser investing is still in its infancy, we don't know yet how it will perform over time. However, other diversified funds typically return around 7 - 8% a year. Early indications are that in 2014, robo-adviser investing did not match the performance of the stock market (e.g. via an index tracker).
What are the benefits of robo-adviser investing?
Automatic - Low-effort investing, based on questions you answer.
Diversified - The portfolios that a robo-adviser chooses from are already well diversified.
What are the drawbacks of robo-adviser investing?
Fees - The fees for robo-advisers are higher than those for investing in a straightforward index fund, which could provide similar performance.
Not much to learn - Because robo-adviser investing does the work for you, there are only limited learning opportunities on how your investments are working.
Robo-adviser investing can be volatile in the short to medium term.
How do you get started with robo-adviser investing?
There are several businesses providing robo-adviser investing, including:
Betterment
Wealthfront
Schwab
Content originally written by Paul Maplesden, a freelance writer, and edited by me.
Insurance industry magazine articles
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Insurance industry research and reports
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Business administration training manual
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Real estate investment report
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Solar energy technical report
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Business administration doctorate
Copy editing and proofreading of a PhD / DBA in business administration and management.
Information on various types of copy editing and proofreading projects.
Brief description
Copy editing and proofreading of a PhD / DBA in business administration and management. I worked with this client throughout their doctoral studies and edited multiple assignments and pieces of coursework.
Approximate length of content edited
10,000 words or more.
Notes on copy editing and proofreading this content
Included copy editing for statistics, research methods, case studies, critiques, presentations, strategic planning, performance management, and executive decision making.
Provided support for an English as a Second Language student.
Questioned and critiqued the work to help the client focus the content.
Edited to remove duplication and highlight gaps in the writing.
Supported client with last minute and out of hours editing and availability.
Worked with this client from the very start of the DBA through to the final thesis presentation, including proposal, abstracts, literature reviews, and methodology.
Investing in stocks — Asking the right questions (full sample)
Copy editing and proofreading of a guide to making investment decisions by asking the right questions about a business.
An example of my editing and proofreading services.
It can be useful to understand exactly how my proofreading and editing services can help you. Below, you’ll find an article that I copy edited and proofread to give you an idea of how I can enhance your content. Please have a read, and if you like the content then please get in touch or get a quote.
About this content
Find out how you can use analysis as a starting point for finding worthwhile investments. This article explores the questions that investors should ask to see if a business is worth investing in.
Editing services provided
Areas of expertise
Investing in stocks — asking the right questions
Good investment decisions are based on solid data, careful research, and keeping a cool head. When deciding what types of business you want to invest in, you need to be able to understand how their shares perform for investors, both individually and compared to other businesses, and compared to the market as a whole.
The easiest and most effective way to do this is to look at several different areas that relate to the business and the investment that you want to make. This fundamental analysis explores the data in the financial reports of every publicly listed company that trades on the stock markets.
Asking questions about business fundamentals
You can start your analysis by asking several questions about the business you want to invest in. Ultimately, you want to know if it is a good idea to invest in a specific business, compared to its competitors.
This type of analysis is only a tool and a broad one at that. It can give you insight into the workings, finances, and successes of a business, but there are far more factors outside a business's control that affect share price. That said, this will still give you a reasonable starting point. When you're looking at individual businesses and stocks, you'll want to ask the following questions:
Do you know the company's business and its area of operation? Some companies perform better in tight economic times, others are stronger when the economy is going well.
Can you identify strong companies in specific sectors? These will normally be household names like Disney in media, Procter & Gamble in consumer goods, Home Depot in home improvement, and Microsoft in computing.
Are company insiders buying or selling their own stock? People in the business buying and selling stock can be a useful indicator of the short- to medium-term prospects for the business. This isn't an exact science (they might be buying stock because it's cheap, or selling stock to finance something unrelated to the business) so use this alongside other information.
You shouldn't be investing money in a company that you don't understand. As an investor, you need to have an opinion of the future success of that business. It can also be very useful to look at the major competitors of a business and how they are doing; for example, if you were looking at Google, you might also investigate Yahoo or Microsoft as they have several competing products that do similar things.
You can also start your investigation with a sector or industry and find out who the largest companies are in that industry. Ultimately, you'll want to put your money into companies that are larger and stronger than their competition, unless you prefer underdog (value) investing or you think those other businesses are undervalued.
This type of analysis is a good starting point for finding worthwhile investments. Combine it with your other investing strategies to create longer-term opportunities to create wealth.
Content originally written by Paul Maplesden, a freelance writer, and edited by me.
Investment basics — Deciding to sell your investments (full sample)
Copy editing and proofreading of a short guide on when you might want to sell your investments.
An example of my editing and proofreading services.
It can be useful to understand exactly how my proofreading and editing services can help you. Below, you’ll find an article that I copy edited and proofread to give you an idea of how I can enhance your content. Please have a read, and if you like the content then please get in touch or get a quote.
About this content
Find out when or if you should sell your investments. Learn the reasons that you might or might not want to hold onto your money. This article also explores what to do when you do decide to sell.
Editing services provided
Areas of expertise
Investment basics — Deciding to sell your investments
You can sell your investments in the same way that you purchased them — through your investment account or brokerage account. There are a few areas to be aware of.
Be sure you want to sell
Carefully consider if you want to sell your investment; there's nothing that says you must sell.
You could hold onto an investment for your whole life, enjoying the interim returns and then leave it for your children or others to inherit.
Reasons you might not want to sell
You haven't met your goal on the investment yet.
You don't know what to do with the money if you do sell.
You may have to pay a higher rate of tax on your profits if you sell in the first year.
There may be penalties or extra fees associated with selling now.
Reasons you might want to sell
You've met your goal and you need the money.
You think that you'll get a better return elsewhere.
You want to invest the money elsewhere because your risk appetite has changed (for example you might want to move to safer investments as you get older).
You want to minimize your losses on the investment and don't want to wait it out.
When you do decide to sell
Check that you understand the fees you'll need to pay, tax implications, and any regulations or penalties.
Sell the investment at a time that's right for you.
If you're selling through an online broker, use a selling order to get the right price.
Content originally written by Paul Maplesden, a freelance writer, and edited by me.