How to start investing?
Read Investing 101 first.
Disclaimer: Investing is risky, which comes with potential rewards. Professionals are here to help you out with high commission fee. You can lose all your money.
“Never put money in something you don’t understand.”
Success is not determined by the amount of cash you possess.
Success is different for everyone and you need to respect what they believe in and the way they live their lives.
Define what is success to you.
“Success for me is being able to do what makes me happy as often as possible regardless of how people see me.”
Still motivated to take risks and face on challenges?!
Let’s makes some losses and gains together.
Open an investment account:
First, what you want to make sure to get is the brokerage service which lets you trade on your own online without broker advice. Otherwise, you would’ve just let professionals make decisions for you and pay a commission as compensation for their helps.
Second, you want to start with a tax shelter account like the TFSA (Tax-Free Savings Account)
Easiest way to start is with a self direct investing platform like Questrade.
Look for a list of all best brokerage:
Go on Google and type “Best online brokerage 2024”
How to purchase/ sell stocks?
Step 1: Open your self-directed TFSA account online and choose the trading equity section.
Step 2: Decide what you want to buy (e.g.: S&P500 ETF -> SPY or Costco stock -> COST)
Step 3: Enter your order
1) Type: Equity (you want stocks, not options)
2) Action: Buy
3) Market: US => if look for US stocks (or Canadian for CAD stocks)
4) Symbol: your company symbol (easily found on yahoo finance)
5) Quantity: number of stocks you want
6) Trade price: (look at google “type of order”)
Quick review: If you choose market order, the next best available price will be yours.
I always go for limit order, because you can buy/ sell at a specified price or “better”
e.g.: I chose 435$/shares. If it goes to 435$ and below, it will buy. If it goes to 436$, the order will not go through.
Look at Bid-ask spread -> to choose your limit order price
8) Settlement funds: CAD or US dollar
If you hold CAD dollar, buy purchase US stocks. They will convert the USD amount into CAD dollar using current exchange rate, so careful.
9) Good until: (you can keep the order open for weeks if you want.)
10) Order commission: Trading fees in the stock currency you are trying to purchase. (e.g.: $4.95 or $10)
11) Submit order and wait.
Market hours are 9:30AM to 4:00PM Eastern Time – Monday to Friday for North America (NYSE, Nasdaq, TSX, TSE)
If you make an order out of trading hours, it will hold until the next market hours.
Google everything you don’t understand. Make mistakes. You are here to learn.
You rather make mistakes on your 1,000$ portfolio now than on your 100,000$ one in the next few years.
“There is nothing that can stop you from learning something new than yourself. Don’t let other people or life be in the way of your education.”
Trade order with Questrade.
SimpleLifeBalancing.