Friday, October 8, 2010

IS INVESTMENT IN STOCKS, A SIMPLE OR A DIFFICULT TASK?

In the beginning, stock investments were usually considered to be a game of highly qualified and trained professionals only. These people were only considered to be capable enough to trade in stock markets because of their close association with the stock market movements. But now, almost every individual whether a household or a corporate have plunged into trading. There are different types of equity stocks where the people may invest- they are growth stocks, income stocks, blue chip stocks and speculative stocks. Investment in different categories of stocks depends upon the time span for which they intend to stay invested, risk averseness, amount of money at their disposal to invest etc. For example- a risk -adverse investor would prefer to invest in the blue chip stocks as these are considered to be the safe and reliable ones. They are expected to yield good compounded returns in the time span of 2-3 years. Whereas, the people who want to play a blind game, have huge risk taking appetite can choose to invest in the speculative stocks. They can either reap out good gains or may even suffer huge losses.
Investing in stocks is not a cake walk. There are still some people who invest in the market blindly, for they have the misconception those stock market investments are purely a speculative game. I would like to throw a light in regard to this misconception in their minds. For a retail investor, investment in stock markets requires proper tracking and data reading on one’s part. It is better if you could sit with a paper and pencil; pinpoint all those points where the prices have consolidated most of the time with reference to the current prices prevailing in the stock market. This would not as a whole, but would give you a slightest hint of the further expected direction of the stock prices. But this should be in support of the other factors as well, both macro and micro. Merely depending upon the broker’s stock investment tips for seeking advice is not a prudent decision; you yourself have to devote some time in studying the markets. There is nothing as such free lunch in this world, so if you are expecting something from the stock market, you would have to give your time to it.
Considerable time is needed to be devoted in selecting your stocks. If you don’t have the time to spare for it, it is advisable to drift your preferences towards the blue chip stocks. Just keep yourself updated with the recent news and refer to the sites like stockinvestmenttips in.
Apart from the retail investor, for a professional investor, fundamentals and market variables have an important bearing on their decisions. These are the players who have ample of stake floating into the market. Any kind of changes can adversely affect the values of their portfolios. These are the people who doesn’t solely rely on 2 – 3 stocks but have portfolios comprising of the large number of stocks.
In a nutshell, investments should be done by considering all the factors in mind. Earning decent returns is not that difficult if we can do a bit of homework on it.