Online banking services and trading platforms have made it very easy for people to invest in stocks from the comfort of their homes. All you need today is a computer and an internet connection. Buying and selling stocks can be a very rewarding, yet risky experience. It is therefore essential to learn the basics before moving your first steps in this world. If you are new to this field and you are looking for a beginner’s guide to investing in stocks, this article will help you find the right resources to get started.
Looking for a Quick Beginner’s Tutorial?
Investopedia.com is one of the best open learning platforms for investors. You may call it an investor’s Wikipedia. Among its many articles, it offers a very short, yet concise guide for people who lack the basic investment notions. Click here to check it out.
You will learn how to determine your investment goals, what’s the role of brokers in stock trading, and what are the costs and minimum requirements to start trading. You will also get a grasp of concepts like investment risk and investment diversification.
It’s a great starting point if you don’t know anything about investing in stocks yet and you want to acquire familiarity with these new concepts and technicalities.
Stock Market Investing for Newbies – A Free eBook
If you’re looking for a more in-depth beginner’s guide on investing in stocks, you can download this free 163-page eBook from Smashwords.com, the largest distributors of indie eBooks. All you need is a free account on Smashwords (sign-up is very easy).
This eBook is called “Stock Market Investing for Newbies” and was written by Derek Chamberlain, an executive MBA and investment blogger. You can download this eBook in PDF, Kindle, or ePub format. You can also use the online reader.
It is divided into seven chapters. In Chapter 1 you will learn about concepts such as inflation, compound interest, typical long term investing results, and financial flexibility.
In Chapter 2 you will read advice on when to get started in the investment world, individual retirement accounts, and why it is important to invest even if you are in debt.
Chapter 3 deals with the basics of the stock markets. After reading it words like stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and ETFs won’t feel so alien and mysterious anymore.
An excerpt from the book
Chapters 4 and 5 provide information on how to get started investing in the stock market. You will also learn new concepts such as stock pricing, stock picking, diversification basics, market index funds, and asset allocation basics.
Chapter 6 explains the difference between investing and trading and concepts such as timing the market, fundamental analysis, technical analysis, and rebalancing.
Finally, Chapter 7 deals with taxation issues. It also suggests further reading for those looking to broaden their investment knowledge.
While very simple and down-to-earth, this guide is extremely effective in explaining the basic principles and notions needed to get started in the investing world. If you read it thoroughly, you won’t just have a vague idea of these concepts. You will understand them and feel much more confident when the times come to put them into practice.
What about Video Tutorials?
On YouTube, you can find plenty of channels dedicated to finance, investing, and trading. Many have videos who target beginners and explain the basic stuff every stock investor must know with the aid of visuals.
For starters, we suggest you take a look at this video from the channel Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell. It gives you a very clear and thorough explanation of how the stock exchange works. It is very short but it’s very effective in explaining some fundamental notions.
The channel Project Life Mastery offers a very helpful 23-minute video on how to get started in investing in stocks. We also suggest you take a look at the other videos this channel offers, as you will find great advice for beginners.
Another YouTube channel you might want to subscribe too is Financial Education. This channel has almost half-a-million followers, it is updated almost daily and its videos contain many charts, images, and other tools that will help you better grasp financial concepts.
Get Acquainted with Financial News
As you start your journey in the world of investing, it’s important for you to get acquainted with financial news. Many financial articles might seem technical and awkward at the beginning, but reading them daily will slowly increase your ability to identify investment opportunities and avoid risky actions.
Investing is not a perfect science like mathematics or physics. It is strongly affected by human psychology, current social events, political trends, and macroeconomic forecasts.
If you want to make money with stocks it is vital that you are updated on what’s going in the financial world.
The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and Forbes are certainly among the leading financial and business newspapers/magazines, but we suggest you also check independent blogs and social media channels for insights on financial trends.
We suggest you have a look at this list posted by The College Investor on The Best Investing Blogs of 2020, as well as this list by The Time on “The 25 Best Financial Blogs“. Other great blogs not included in these lists are Oblivious Investor and My Money Blog.
Conclusion
As you can see, it’s perfectly possible for somebody who doesn’t have any previous knowledge of stocks and financial markets, to find free online resources and become acquainted with this field.
Once you’ve grasped the basic principles and notions and have become familiar with financial news, you can start using online trading platforms or online services offered by your bank to start investing.
As with many other things, many investment skills are only learned “by doing” but first you have to make sure you have grasped the basics. And don’t forget to check our other reviews on business and finance online courses.
We hope you found this article helpful. Feel free to drop a comment below if you have any questions or thought about what you just read or if you want to share your personal experience with these investment guides and tutorials or with other resources you have used in the past.
Thank you for such a genuine insight into something that I have a great interest in and whilst learning in small bite size chunks still come across a lot of articles that only want to sell me “stuff”.
I did think that there is so much to learn before investing my well earnt money so than you for showing me resources that can make this a lot more simple for me.
Right now I have the time to read and familiarize myself with in the World of Finance so the video tutorials and the news sources will be a lot of important to help for me.
Thank you
Thank for sharing your thoughts. We are glad you found this article useful!
That is quite a great list. I checked investopedia and I can confirm that it just like a Wikipedia for investment. It is very pedagogical, easy to understand. But what I am looking for right now is the practical side of investing, I guess from someone who has already experience it, do you know where I can find such a person to coach me? Or at least advise me.
Thanks
Yes, Investopedia is a great website for people without an academic finance education who want to increase their knowledge of investing gradually and naturally. From a practical point of view, investing has become very easy nowadays. Free platforms like eToro, Plus500 and Ameritrade make it extremely simple for people around to world to just open an account and start investing. Some of these platforms also offer “virtual accounts”, which allow you to invest virtual money and follow your investments’ performance daily. This can be very helpful for people who want to get acquainted with these platforms before investing real money. Another great tool is social media. Many of them have groups and pages dedicated to both professional and non-professional investors. If you have a Reddit account we suggest you check out Reddit communities (or “subreddits”) dedicated to investing. There you can ask questions to more experienced investors without having to pay a financial advisor.
Hello,
I would love to learn about investing. I am a beginner in this field. This question might sound a bit personal, but I’m curios to know if you invest and how much have you earned with investing in stocks.
I really like your site and I if possible I would like to learn investing from you as I think you really know what you’re talking about. I’m also interested to know if investing takes a lot of time from your weekly routine as I’m busy most of the time working on my blog and trying to make money with internet marketing. But I would really like to earn money investing too.
I have an interest in earning money online, but I wouldn’t know how to balance learning new internet marketing skills and learning how to invest effectively. Which one of them would make you more money in the short run? What about the long run?
Can you just copy someone else’s investment portofolio and expect to make a profit?
Thank you for this wonderful blog!
Enxhi
Hello dreamgirl93. We are not investment experts. We review the best online courses and tutorials by analyzing customer experiences, results and feedback and by summarizing each course’s structure so that online learners can make an informed choice. Social trading platforms like eToro have become very popular. They allow you to copy another investor’s portfolio and trading strategies. It’s basically like giving somebody full authorization to invest your money for you. If that’s going to be your strategy, it’s very important to look for capable and trustworthy investors and traders to follow. Look at their financial results over the years and read their copiers’ feedback. If they’ve been making consistent profits for quite some time and have very positive feedback from their followers, chances are that copying them will increase your chances of succeeding in this world.
Hi, thanks for sharing this amazing article on looking for beginner’s guide to investing in stock. This article is very interesting and I have a lot reading this article. I don’t know anything concerning investing stock and I have never invest in stock. Reading your article has madee want to invest on stock because I have able to understand it . Thanks for sharing once again.
Glad to hear you liked the article. We wish you great success with your investments!
Hey,
This is a very informative and insightful article, and it is very well written. I’ve never invested in stocks, and to be honest I wasn’t exactly sure what it was a few weeks ago. However, since being in lockdown, I am having a difficult time with my job. I’m not exactly sure what’s going to happen to us so I am looking for other streams of income.
Thank you for sharing this because I am going to look into investing in stocks and I’m going to start by downloading your guide first. If I have any questions then I will get in touch, and I will also let you know how I am getting on.
Keep up the amazing work on your site. All the best,
Tom
Glad to hear you find this article informative, Tom! Wish you great success with your first steps in the financial world.
Hallo there,
I have been saving up for investing in stocks for a few months now and I feel like this is the right time for me to do it. However, I have very little knowledge about doing this safely as I have heard there are many chances of getting my fingers burnt than there are of making making a good hit. Your guide has really come in handy for me and has given me good direction in this area. I really appreciate the valuable post. Thanks!
We’re glad you find this article useful, Dave!
A well-written article explaining the stock market. As you have indicated news plays a very important aspect in trading of stocks. I am already investing in forex but I very interested in the stock market. I love how you were able to simply breakdown the information as to what is the stock market and how beneficial but risky it is.
Thanks for your comment, Jaye!
Nice comprehensive review of all the different places to learn about investing. I was curious about on thing though. A lot of people do use Wikipedia, but it has been known to have incorrect information. People are supposed to police themselves, but that doesn’t stop some from posting things that are either inaccurate or just plain wrong.
Is Investopedia monitored differently? I would think that people who post there have a vested interest in making sure everything is well-vetted and correct. Just wanted to get your take.
Thanks for the break down on the e-book also. I’m sure anyone looking to get started in doing their own investing would find it extremely helpful.
Hi Karl. Thanks for your comment. Investopedia has very positive feedback from users around the world. While not an “academic” website, it is definitely one of the best starting points for people who have little or no knowledge of financial notions. Surely, as your financial knowledge increases, you might want to look at resources that focus on specific aspects of the financial markets.
Stock market investing was always complicated for me. Every time I want to start, it looks like a complex task.
Not just knowing the stock market basics, but how to find undervalued stocks and how to evaluate companies.
For stock market investment you should look for long term ownership of a company’s stock. And you need to find the right company to buy its stock.
Investopedia is a great resource for learning stock investment. Also, I checked Forbes and it has really great articles.
Your post summarizes all the useful resources and could be used as a reference. You did a great job.
Thank you.
Thanks for the comment and for sharing your opinions, Sardal.
Great article for beginners on investment in stocks. I’m still looking at the best ways to earn additional income and investing in stock market sound an interesting area to purse. I think you have provided several important tips and thanks for the freebie ebook and some of the relevant links. I will have a close look in investing in stocks. Thanks!
Thanks for your comment, David, and good luck with your plans to learn how to invest in the stock market!