It’s important to get the research and analysis before putting our hard money anywhere. When it comes to investing in the stock market, two things are very important to conduct: fundamental analysis and technical analysis.
There are two types of investors: investors who choose to go to alone like they do their own research or investors taking advice from professional advisors.
If you’re an individual investor, you need to understand prospective buys before putting money on any stock.
To know stock ideas, here are up-to-date stock screeners and market data available that can help and be helpful to invest individuals.
See our: Free Stock Bonus
Know your Industry
Investors need as much information and market analysis as possible about what’s going on in the stock market.
The first step to finding great stocks is knowing the industry. The best way to do this? Learn what your competitors are doing and watching for. Look at trends in related technology, materials, or even business models that will likely affect your company’s prospects.
Take a top-down Approach
- Get an overview of the market as a whole.
- Look at the big picture and see what’s going on with the economy as a whole. How are industries doing? What’s happening in China? What’s happening in Europe? Are there any economic trends that indicate growth or contraction? How does this compare to previous years or to other countries’ economies?
- Now, look at individual sectors.
- Which sectors will benefit from those bullish trends you identified earlier? Which ones will suffer because of those bearish trends you identified earlier (or vice versa)? Again, understanding how one sector moves relative to another is key here—you need to know which companies are riding the tide and which aren’t able to get traction.
Go with what you know
Your own experience is the best place to start. If you’ve had a personal experience with a company, product, or service, then you have a great starting point. Maybe it was good, and you’d like to tell others about it. Perhaps it was bad, and you want to warn people away from that company or product. Either way, if your story is compelling enough, people will be interested in reading it.
Be sure not just to write about what interests everyone else, though – try going into detail about the things that interest YOU personally! This might mean writing about something unusual (like your favorite hobby) or posting photos of family members instead of random strangers on Instagram or Twitter accounts – whatever makes YOU happy will probably make other people happy too!
Read the Financial News
Reading the financial news is a great way to get stock ideas because it’s a good source of information. If you’re looking at the financial news, it means that you want to learn more about what’s going on with the economy and how that might affect your investments. A good example of this is when a company files for bankruptcy and its stock price drops significantly.
If you have read about this in your newspaper or online, then you have an opportunity to buy some shares before they go back up again!
Few best financial news sites like Fox Business can, Seeking Alpha, and Benzinga Pro help you provide actionable information for you to make informed decisions. Things like real-time data, stock analysis tools, and employable advice.
You don’t have to have all of these to rank as a top investment resource, but they should provide a compelling value proposition.
Listen to Trade and Business Shows
Listening is an important first step in finding out what stocks to buy. There are many different ways to listen:
- Listen through a web browser or on your smartphone or tablet with a browser.
- Download the audio files and listen to them on your computer or smartphone with iTunes or another podcasting software (e.g., Downcast).
- Subscribe via email, which will automatically download new episodes as they become available (best for those who want to set it and forget it).
Read Company Financial Statements
You can start with the financial statements. You’ll find a lot of information in these documents, but trends are what you’re really looking for. Does the company have consistent growth? Are they expanding or shrinking? Is their debt increasing or decreasing? How much cash flow are they bringing in and how much are they spending on operations? How much money is leftover at the end of a quarter or year (earnings per share)? What’s their revenue look like compared to previous periods?
You can find stock ideas in some prominent places and some not-so-obvious areas.
- You can find stock ideas in some obvious places and some not-so-obvious places.
- A good place to start is by looking at what stocks you already own and finding out where they’re trading. Then look at the other companies that are in the same industry and see if there are any good bets within that group of companies.
- Another way to do this is by looking up the top holdings of mutual funds or hedge funds that have done well historically and checking out those companies’ websites for information about their businesses, such as earnings reports or investor presentations from conferences that were held over the past few years (you can use Google Scholar for this).
Bottom Line
Are you looking to learn more about trading and investing? If you’re looking to dig into investing in stocks, open an account with a broker that provides good screening and research, including the work of professional analysts that can help you get started. No matter your learning style, you can start your investing journey with Webull (6 free stocks, valued up to $9,600) or Moomoo (5 Free stocks, valued up to $6,400).
