When someone invests, they are distributing resources, like money, with the hope of generating a profit. Whether it's to build up the value of something and sell it later or to generate income and build wealth gradually over time. Some of the different forms of investing include the stock market, bonds, real estate, commodities, collectibles, savings accounts and funds.
It is also important to understand return and risk. Wells Fargo Advisors say that return is the money or value you get back when you invest money into something. Risk is the possibility of receiving a lowered value from the investment.
Helpful Links: The Washington Post did a postcast episode in their "The Confident Wallet" series where experts talk about how to get started with investing and the biggest takeaways. Listen here now as they explain bonds, stocks, portfolios, and market fluctuations.
In this section, we will introduce the different forms of investing, such as the stock market and cryptocurrency, along with providing some helpful tools and tips. Whether you want to get serious about investing or just want to get a general grasp of it, this page and the resources provided will be helpful in informing your investing decisions.
Robin Hood aims to help you build your portfolio as you invest in stocks, options, and ETFs at a low cost. They also help you manage cryptocurrency, keeping track of the market and offering a place to easily keep track of the rates.
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Wells Fargo Investing offers four different ways for you to invest your money, including doing it on your own, automated investing, an investing advisor and a team that helps balance your wealth. The app will provide different resources for you to make informed wealth management and investing decisions.
Photo from wellsfargo.com
Ellevest is a company run by women for women. They offer services such as private wealth management, digital investing, and money and career coaching. They also create an investing portfolio for you, using stocks, bonds, and alternative funds, taking you through the steps for effective investments.
Photo from ellevest.com
These tips are from several different websites, combined into a list that we think will be the most helpful for beginners to know.
Check out these other lists for investing:
U.S. News Money 10 Best Tips for Beginning Investors
Forbes Advisor Tips for Long-Term Investing
The stock market is the place where people can trade shares, or capital, of public businesses to increase profit with low risk. Once you select and put the money into the stock of your choice, you can start enjoying the benefits. Remember to keep an eye out for how your stocks are doing to keep track of what your money is doing, updating, removing, and adding when necessary.
There are different types of investing in the stock market. Individual stock investments include purchasing specific business shares with your own research. ETFs, or Exchange-traded funds, are groups of individual stocks but include a broader reach of companies under the same scope, thus comprising an index and exposing. Mutual fund stocks are put together by finance professionals, who manage the assets and generate the returns back to the investors. Thus, there is a group of investors who are part of the mutual fund dividing both the profits and the losses earned by stocks, bonds, and assets.
Cryptocurrency is a type of online currency that is exchanged across networks and spread out online, making it uncontrolled by the government. Two of the most popular cryptocurrencies are Ethereum and BitCoin, which people can buy and sell with different currencies across the world to trade with each other.
NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens, are seen as under the cryptocurrency umbrella. Investopedia says, “Fungibility means that the individual parts which make up a good or commodity are interchangeable.” Non-fungible things are valued separately, like jewelry. NFTs are typically composed of digital art (but can also include games and collectibles) and can be bought with cryptocurrency at a certain value, as they are made with some of the same technology. Popular NFTs include Nyan Cat, CryptoPunk, and Bored Ape Yacht Club.
The NFT and crypto market boomed in 2020 and 2021, and there are several opposing opinions about them. You can read some of the advantages and disadvantages users and professionals have found in this article by GeeksForGeeks.