Stage 1 - Research
Many people don’t know the difference between a stock and a share. The difference between both is that a stock is the owner certificates of any company. However, a share is the owner certificates of a particular company. Some major world markets in the world are NASDAQ in New York, Nikkei 225 in Tokyo, Australia ASX All Ordinaries in Australia. Each particular stock has its own ticker symbol. A ticker symbol is an abbreviation used to identify traded shares of a particular stock on a particular stock market. With investments there is also something called a mutual fund. A mutual fund is a collection of investments owned by a group of investors. Mutual fund is used to determine what types of securities it buys. It often focuses on specific types of investments. When trying to sell stocks you need to have people who are willing to buy them. This is called supply and demand. When a demand for a stock increases the price usually increases too and vice versa. Therefore investing in a stock market is not always positive. Some pros it can have are; capital growth, Higher returns than bonds or cash deposits on average, some protection against inflation, ownership and influence over companies. However, there are also some cons; the risk that the company will become bankrupt and your shares in that company will be worthless. The risk that the price of your shares will fall when you want to sell them so that you get back less than you paid for them. They’re often high charges for managed funds and mutual funds which invest in equities. Shop around to make sure you get a good deal. Returns are unknown so it can be hard to plan you finances in advance.
Stage 2 - Invest
Stage 3a - Re-evaluate
Stage 3b - Reflection
Half way through my project, my two best companies I have invested in are 21st Century Fox and iRobot. My worst company is the Ritter Pharmaci. I don’t know what Ritter Pharmaci is but I heard from other students that it was a good stock. I invested in it but now I have realized that I probably invested in it too late. Therefore I will delete it soon. 21st Century Fox is doing really well because there are probably many new popular movies that have been projected since I have invested in this company. For now I’m having a profit of 9.74%.
Even though I have many good investments, I have one stock that has a negative profit of -5.06%. From this company called BIC, I only have 1 share. Normally I would’ve traded this share, but I haven’t because this company was doing really well at the beginning of the project so I’m expecting it to go up at one moment.
One change that I would’ve done until this moment was checking my stocks more so that I know when one of them is in the negatives. I have realized that I had some companies that have been in the negatives since I had bought them. However, I never looked at them to know that until now. Therefore my current portfolio value has been going down instead of up.
Stage 4a - Final Investment - Line Graphs
Stage 4b - Final Reflection
Near the end of my stock project I have realized that Netflix, ING and iRobot have helped me increase my profit. One of the reasons why they have been doing better since I bought them is stunningly because of the presidential election. Specifically, for iRobot I have noticed that the company has been improving a lot by not only making robots for your home, but also by making robots for all sorts of applications. iRobot is the only company I have that is really small, but works the best. Now it has a 38.52% profit.
After looking back at the beginning of this project, I realized that I wanted to invest in big companies. However, I have realized that big companies aren’t always the best stocks to invest in because the moment you will invest in it, it will be at its highest peak so the company will drop down and you will not get much profit from this company. Now I know that the best companies to invest in are small companies that will reach up to their peak while you have already invested in their stocks. An example of this is iRobot. I have invested in this stock since 22nd of September, which is quite quickly after the introduction of the project and now I’m getting 38.49% profit from this company. In all, I’d change my kind of companies to invest in. instead of investing in big and popular companies, I’d get a share in the small unnoticeable companies.
What I have learnt from this project is that money is very valuable. The values of the investments are unexpected and can quickly change positively/negatively. These values often change because of major world events, however, people like me don’t expect these events to change the way a company is doing. Now I have realized that anything that happens around the world or company can change even just a little bit of the company’s profit/loss