Nope.

/thread

Hey, it doesn't have to be with real moneys. It could be paper trades. I know a lot of kids do a school project that's paper trades.

This is probably the wrong age crowd for this topic though

I did do a stock market project as a senior. It was pretty fun, but I don't remember it too well, and that's about the extent of it.

My Mom has shares in Tesco, that's the closest I get to "Investment".

It wouldn't be good for my health to do it.

Yeah, my dad raised me on how the stock market works. He actually didn't teach me how to read books, he taught me how to read the financial section of the paper. I've done those mock stock things a few times, mostly in high school, and I was always able to gain about 20% in the month or so we were doing it.

The last two years have been an absolute brilliant time to buy stock if you have any extra cash. Like my dad says, "Buy when they're depressed, sell when they're happy," talking about other investors obviously. Like the company he's worked for for the last 23 years (and the company I am working at now) nearly went bankrupt last year. Stock prices dropped from their usual $14 to just $0.37 a share. The entire company was really worked up about getting rid of their shares before it hit rock bottom and they lost everything. Better to make something than nothing, right? Well my dad saw it differently and bought as much as he possibly could. They're back up to $12 now. In the month where the banking market crashed alone a year and a half ago, he raked in $50,000 off of smart buys like that. You risk losing everything really quick, sure. He did it with Kmart about a decade ago and Kmart went under and he lost his shares and roughly $10,000. You just gotta be smart about it. If you see McDonald's shares in a free fall, buy as much as you can. McDonald's is too strong to go under, you'll make a shit ton of money off of it. Same with most]/i] Fortune 500 companies. Obviously some will fail and you'll lose, but that's the risk you take.

I don't have any investments to my name right now. Just a bank account with $2500 in it. As soon as I get enough to pay back some of my student loans (which have ridiculous interest rates) and my next semester of college, though, I'm going to start playing around with it.

Well today (tomorrow who knows) we went over when to buy (other than just "buy low sell high"). There's some good indicators that can be read as saying that there's a good chance the stock will have a significant increase (before the increase occurs, that is). The other thing that we looked at is what makes the criteria for a good stock. For instance, you mentioned McDonald's (and I'm not getting on your ass, you were just giving an example with no research), but they meet only one of the six main criteria for a worthwhile stock.

The other thing we learned about was a little bit about stock options, which is what I'm really interested in. Basically though, for the same risk you can get 10* the reward.

All-in-all, pretty fascinating learning. I'm definitely glad I signed up for the course.

McDonald's is actually a strong stock to buy. Granted, you shouldn't anticipate high reward in the short term. It must be a long term buy. You can't expect to turn around and sell them next year and make anything worthwhile. 10 years from now? Sure.

McDonald's is what I've heard people call a "retirement stock." It has a slight risk (a batch of bad meat can take down a chain, look at Jack in the Box) but it should be increase proportionally with inflation perhaps a little faster, something a lot of bank accounts and mutual funds can't guarantee.

The "six main criteria for a worthwhile stock" are, no offense, investing for dummies. It's the safe way to invest. You have to look at things from different angles.

For example, penny stocks. They're cheap. Insanely cheap. Hell, they're called penny stocks. This is where you can make or break your bank account. You buy let's say a thousand shares of a penny stock. They fluctuate so much that you could easily make twice that in a day or two if you keep your eye on the market and sell at the right time. Of course, you could go and lose yourself roughly a grand doing that as well (the thing with penny stocks is that they are prone to bankruptcy), but it can be a great way to make quick buck. Conexant (CXT or CNXT I believe) used to be a great penny stock. It was the first stock I would buy in mock stocks and it would give me a return of 10% or so during the week before we are allowed to make changes. It's absolute crap now (My dad says they just did a 4 for 1 swap. Yes, most companies do splits and you end up with twice as many shares. Conexant actually took shares away), but it was good 3 or 4 years ago.


Last Edit: May 2, 2010 2:25:48 GMT by Josh