How to invest in the US stock market?

Stock reports and blogs about the US stock market

One of the best sources of investment comes from other investors. Remember, there are no rules in this world that say you can’t own the same stock as someone else. However, you should do your research very well before taking any action.

There are many blogs and stock reports that will show you ideas and information. In addition, investment managers publish quarterly letters outlining the best-performing stocks and why they got them.

Here are some places where you can get a little information about it.

Bloomberg

This is one of the most important financial platforms in the world. To stay up to date on financial news, you can check out the various analyzes that they post on their website constantly.

Investment

This portal not only shows references to monitor the evolution of its markets, but also offers a good amount of information on the possible financial resolutions of the American stock market.

YahooFinance

This website has been offering financial information for years with every passing minute. If you need information about a company, you just have to go to key statistics and you will be able to see everything related to its actions.

Of course, there are many other English websites that specialize in this field. For example, we can mention big platforms, such as Seeking Alpha, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, SumZero, Motley Fool, among many others.

2. Choose a broker or investment fund

Another extremely important step is choosing the broker or investment fund with which you will work. As you well know, we all have interests and that is normal. However, you will want to hire someone who has similar interests as you. For that reason, you must take special care before selecting one.

Here are some things you’ll want to see in a trustworthy broker or mutual fund.

• The broker must be registered with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the entity in charge of regulating them.
• Check the commissions you will have to pay
• Look for a company that has a demonstrable track record
• Take a look at the minimum amounts of their accounts
• Evaluate the fees they impose on accounts
• Ask them to send you all the charges they make and read the fine print
• See if they offer investment tools, analysis and study
• Enter your investment app
• See if they have already done promotions (perhaps they will repeat them in the future)

The broker will be the intermediary that will carry out all the transactions on your behalf. Normally, this is a complete job because you have to connect the people who want to buy with the people who sell their shares. In this way, thousands of transactions are generated every day and they earn a small portion.

Now, after deciding which broker you will use, it is important that you meet the requirements so that you can open an account at the brokerage house and thus be able to start investing in the stock market.

Requirements to invest in the US stock market

As we will show you later, people cannot buy and sell on the stock market by themselves. For this they will need a broker or an investment fund. In this sense, you will have to meet the following requirements to start.

• Open a trading account
• Open a Demat account
• Link these two accounts to your bank account. For this they will also ask you to send an image of a blank check, so that they can verify your ownership of the account.
• Provide the following KYC documentation (know your customer)
• Government-issued ID, such as a passport, driver’s license, or SSN
• Proof of address, such as an electric bill, bank statement, or letter from employer
• KYC form

Today, broker platforms allow you to fill in this data virtually and send the scanned documents. In this way, the processes are accelerated and you can start making transactions in a couple of days, when your data is confirmed.

Once you have opened an account and everything is in order, you will be able to carry out transactions through the internet or through telephone calls.

5 important brokers in the USA

If you don’t know which broker you should get, we show you some of the most important in the country. Remember that whoever you choose must meet the requirements mentioned above.

Fidelity Investments

Fidelity Investments is one of the best brokerage firms for its client-based approach. Other brokers are trying to close this gap, but the company remains one of the ones that provides the most services with its clients in mind.

Among some of the positive aspects that we can mention we have that it is one of the firms that refuses to pay for order flow, keeps its prices low and is always adding tools and methods that facilitate the analysis for investors.

Advantages

• 97.9% of Fidelity orders are executed at a better price than the national average
• Robust research and value scanning
• Cash is automatically deposited into a money market account
• Offers many educational elements

Disadvantages

• Some traders may need the web platform in combination with Active Trader Pro to access tools and research
• Non-citizens and non-residents cannot open an account with them
• Fidelity offers a wide range of securities, but does not offer commodities or futures.

TD Ameritrade

TD Ameritrade’s strength lies largely in investor education, providing one of the best introductions to the market for beginners. Of course, there are brokers that are cheaper or better, but TD Ameritrade has all the resources, the range of offerings, and the technical support that will help you in the long run.

TD Ameritrade includes several systems that teach beginners advanced techniques and the ability to trade without compromise. In this sense, they provide a robust accompaniment, without being overwhelming.

Advantages

• They provide multiple educational sections with beginners in mind
• They have mobile and web compatibility to access the account conveniently and quickly
• They give a wide range of platforms for all types of traders and investors.

Disadvantages

• Some investors may have to use multiple platforms to access tools
• Extensive menu of account types can make it difficult to select the correct one
• Investors receive a small interest on uninvested cash unless they ask to move their money into market funds

Tastyworks

The prices of this company are extremely competitive when it comes to options contracts, but their real advantage is in the educational platforms and tools they offer. However, Tastyworks is not exactly a tool to invest in options, but the one that you end up using when you have decided that this is your niche.

Tastyworks is optimized for options tasks in a way that few others do. Options traders will find all the tools and analysis they need during their trading sessions and can even consume content for their next session.

Advantages

• They have all the tools you need to invest in options
• Charts are located in the options, allowing you to analyze risk profiles
• They have a large library, mainly focused on futures options

Disadvantages

• If you want to invest in Tastyworks in something other than futures, you are in the wrong place
• There is no fixed income in the sessions, beyond the ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) that contain bonuses
• Access to portfolio analytics requires setting up an account with the Quiet Foundation, which is also part of your corporation

Interactive Brokers

This is a good option for day traders. Interactive Brokers provides greater access to international markets, stock selection on loan listings, and unbelievably low spreads. In addition, you can find all the values and tools you need at your fingertips.

Advantages

• Faster order executions
• Contingency orders for any situation
• Very low interest margins
• They have the option to trade cryptocurrencies

Disadvantages

• The SmartRouter is not available for Lite clients
• It can take a while to learn how the system works
• The trading algorithms and the automated system have not been tested

Charles Schwab

This is a full service firm and they are the best at managing ETFs. This is mainly because they have graphs focused on these values. However, they do have a great offering, including education systems and analytics tools.

Schwab makes the process of investing in ETFs very simple, while providing excellent research and screenings for investors who want to do their research thoroughly before making a decision.

Advantages

• The StreetSmart Edge ETF Screener has over 150 search criteria
• The platform is adjustable and robust
• Schwab is an excellent broker beyond the functionalities for ETFs

Disadvantages

• Outside of ETFs, Schwab can be a bit pricey in futures options
• To get the benefits of the ETF Screener, you must use its platform

3. Buy shares on the US stock market

Remember that at no time should you feel pressured to buy shares, nor should you fill your portfolio at the same time. Start small – very small – by buying a single stock to see how it feels, while avoiding the roller-coaster feelings that charts bring. As time progresses, you can increase your position until you are rich.

Beginning investors should also consider fractional shares. This is a new offer that online brokers have, which allow you to buy portions of a share, instead of buying a complete one.

This means that you will not have to pay a lot of money for expensive companies, like Google or Amazon, but you will be able to start with a small investment.

Choose the type of order you want to execute

All the numbers and weird words may confuse you at first, but don’t let that deter you. Next, we show you a small guide with all the terms you will find.

Glossary of transactions on the US stock market
Word	Definition
ask or sell	Price you are willing to accept for your shares.
bid or buy	Price at which you want to buy shares.
Spread	Difference between the highest selling price and the lowest buying price.
Market order	Request to buy or sell a stock as quickly as possible at the best available price
Limit order	Request to buy or sell a stock at a certain or more profitable price
Stop loss or Stop order	Once the stock reaches a price, a sell market order is executed.
stop-limit order	When the stop price is reached, the trade becomes a limit order and an upper and lower stop loss is set

There are many complex moves to make orders, but don’t worry about them for that at first. Major investors have made successful careers with only two types of orders: market order and limit order.

Market Order

When you place a market order, you are indicating that you want to buy or sell the stock at the current best market price. Since the market order does not set any parameters, your order will be executed immediately, unless you are trying to buy a million shares.

You shouldn’t be surprised if the price you actually paid isn’t exactly what you asked for a few seconds before. Bid and ask prices fluctuate constantly throughout the day. For that reason, the market order is more useful when buying stocks that do not experience large changes in their prices, such as larger and more solid companies.

Limit Order

The limit order gives you more control over the price at which you want to execute the order. For example, if a stock is trading at $100, and you feel that $95 per share is more in line with your own valuation of the company, then the limit order will tell your broker to wait and fill the order when the stock price drops. action at that level. On the other hand, the limit order will tell your broker to sell the stock when the offer level reaches the price you have set.

Limit orders are a good tool for investors who buy shares of smaller companies, which tend to show wider spreads, depending on the activity of the investor. They are also good for investing during periods of volatility or when the price of the stock is more important than its execution.

This order also has additional conditions that you can set to control how long it will stay open. An AON (all or none) limit order is executed when all the shares you want are available at your limit price.

A GFD (good for a day) limit order will expire at the end of the day, even if the order has not been executed. While a GTC (good till canceled) limit order remains in play until the client indicates otherwise or the order expires between 60 and 120 days later, depending on the brokerage company.

Get advice

After all the steps above, you should be ready to invest. However, it is advisable to include an additional step: advice. There are few experts in this world. After all, all knowledge is generated from experience, beyond theory. For that reason, it is recommended that you seek an expert who can advise you.

Listen carefully to what he has to say and question it. Ask the questions that you consider necessary and propose your next moves to know what he thinks about it. Thus, you will be able to acquire more experience in a reduced period of time and you will begin to earn more money for your movements.

4. Track your actions

It is important that you keep track of the actions you buy. However, you shouldn’t worry too much either. When it comes to the world of investing, some people completely forget they ever made any investments, while others are refreshing stock pages every 5 minutes.

The normal thing is that you place periods of time in which you follow up on the companies that you have bought. Some people do it once a day, while others do it every two or three days. People working with very long-term investments or those looking to invest for retirement typically follow up once a week.

If you feel like you need to look at your investments all the time, this is probably a sign that you have invested too much money. Remember that you should only buy shares for amounts that you feel comfortable with, that is, residual money.

It is also important that you form the habit of reading the news. From time to time, national or global events, as well as the creation of new disruptive companies, can show you a possible drop in the price of your shares.

5. Manage your investment portfolio or sell your shares

One of the most difficult processes is portfolio management, especially when you have made a lot of money or when things are going well. Remember that from time to time, you must calculate how your actions are performing. After all, not all stocks remain positive for life.

If things are going really well, you might as well start looking for your profits. Otherwise, other people will. When this happens, prices begin to drop because more people are selling than buying. As a consequence, you will have to wait again for prices to stabilize and rise again in order to withdraw your profits.

There are various strategies to manage the investment portfolio. Some people prefer to keep their money in the bank or at home, while others decide to invest that same money in mutual funds, index funds, high-yield bonds, or other companies that are undervalued to avoid the effects of inflation, the payment taxes and other negative elements.

However, you must inform yourself, learn the different methods that exist and see what other investors do in order to obtain the highest possible return.

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Frequent questions Asked

What are shares?

Put most simply, stocks are a part of a company’s ownership. When you buy a share of a company, you buy a small portion of the whole. Each of the parts of the company in question has the same value as the others and its price can decrease or increase over a period of time.

Let’s look at it as an example. Suppose we want to buy shares in Google. The entire company costs more than $1 billion and very few people have the money to cover that amount. In addition, it is a public company, that is, anyone can buy it.

For this reason, they have divided the company into many small parts that are worth a couple of thousand dollars. In this way it is more accessible and anyone can buy a part of the property, making it truly public. Over time, the value of each share increases and people receive more money for their investment.

What is the stock market and how does it work?

The stock market is the institution where all the people who want to buy and sell company shares meet. In this way, an organization is maintained in the process and its growth in the market is promoted.

All companies have owners. Smaller companies are usually owned by a single person, but larger corporations tend to be owned by a large number of people who buy and sell shares. In order to simplify and organize the buying and selling of these shares publicly, companies use the stock market.

In fact, the regulations of the American government indicate that when a company reaches a certain number of people who own it, it must be made public. This allows a large number of holders to buy and sell the shares more quickly.

Let’s see it in a simpler way. Imagine that you have a friend who is setting up a small business. This person is doing well, but he needs capital to expand. For this reason, he proposes that you own part of the company if you invest part of your savings. If you agree, will you sell your share of the company after a couple of days? Most likely you won’t.

You must do the same thing when you buy shares in a public company. The only difference is that your friend’s company is private and has only two shareholders, while US stock companies are public and you are free to buy or sell them on the stock market, at any time you see fit. prompt.

How to calculate the value of a company in the US stock market?

The value of a company is usually referred to as the market capitalization and is represented by the price of the company’s shares. The Market Cap, as it is commonly called, is equal to the share price multiplied by the number of shares.

For example, a stock with a price of $5 and 10 million shares outstanding has a value of $50 million.

$5 per share x 10 million shares = $50 million

If we take this one step further, we can see that a company that has shares at a price of $10 per share and one million shares outstanding is worth less than the previous company.

$10 per share x 1 million shares = $10 million

This shows us that the value of shares is relative and proportional to the value of a company and only represents changes in the percentages of the market cap at a given time.

Any change in stock percentages will result in an equal percentage change in the value of the company. For this reason, investors are always alert to changes in share prices and any change can result in large losses.

For example, if the first company is down $0.10 per share, the loss this small amount represents is $100,000 across all shareholders.

Now imagine that the company manages to earn 5% more money than in the previous year. Then the value of your shares will increase. If you manage to do this consistently over long periods of time, then people who have bought shares will see their invested capital grow.

How is the share price determined?

In simple terms, the price of a company’s shares is calculated when its purchase and sale becomes public through an event called an Initial Public Offering (IPO). Right now, the company pays an investment bank to use complex formulas and valuation techniques to derive a company’s value and determine how many shares will be offered to the general public and at what price.

For example, a company that is valued at $100 million might want 10 million shares at a value of $10 per share or they might want to issue 20 million shares at a value of $5 per share.

As we saw in the Apple example, the value of a company depends on how large a company can grow in the future. When a company sells more goods, enters a new market, or improves its profit margins, its profits and total value increase.

How do you know how much a share is worth on the stock market?

Investors often assign a value to a company’s stock because it helps them decide whether or not to buy it. The problem is that there is no single way to assign value to stocks.

Active investors vs. passive investors

On the one hand, active investors or those who believe they can develop and execute investment strategies to beat the majority of the market value stocks on the basis that the intrinsic value of the company is totally separate from the price of the stock. market. These people typically use metrics to estimate the intrinsic value of the stock and then compare it to the current market price.

Passive investors believe in the efficient market hypothesis. This means that the market price of the stock is equal to its intrinsic value. These people believe that all the information that is known is already in the value of the stock. For this reason, they often suggest investing in index funds or ETFs, instead of doing the almost impossible task of beating the market.

P/E Ratio Formula

The most common way to know the value of a stock is to compute the P/E ratio (price-to-earnings or price-earnings in Spanish) of the company. In its essence, this number indicates how many years you must wait with the current earnings to receive your money back. The higher the number, the faster you can recover your investment.

A low P/E ratio implies that the investor buying the stock is receiving an attractive amount of value, that the company’s earnings are expected to start to decline, or that the company is being undervalued.

P/E Ratio Example

Let’s see an example. Let’s calculate Walmart ‘s P/E ratio. In its fiscal year 2021, the company reported diluted earnings per share of $4.75. At the time of this writing, the value of each Walmart share is priced at $148.45.

To get Walmart’s P/E ratio, we simply have to divide the company’s share price by its earnings per share. What we are left with is as follows:

$139.78 / $4.75 = 29.43

This number can be viewed in different ways depending on the investor because it largely depends on their goals, which may be more value-oriented or growth-oriented. However, big investors have some rules.

• The average P/E of a company over the last decade should be around 15.
• Very good companies or those that have high returns with earnings and consistent growth tend to be between 20 and 25 P/E.
• Bad companies or those that have unpredictable profits with low returns on investment typically have 10 P/E

Importance of the P/E Ratio

Buying and selling stocks should be based on P/E, as earnings are expected to grow in the future. For example, companies growing 30% per year might justify selling at 30 P/E. Similarly, if they grow 15% each year, they can be sold at 15 P/E and companies that do not grow much can be sold at 5 or 10 P/E.

5 P/E	10 P/E	10-15 P/E	15-20 P/E	20 P/E	25 P/E
Slow growing company. Cyclical and low quality. ROI less than 10% per year.	Slow growing company. cyclical ROI between 2% and 10% per year.	Average company.	Above average.	Strong company. Return on investment greater than 15% per year.	Great growth or very good quality company. Return on investment greater than 20% per year.

As you can see, there is not much difference between valuing a company or a product in the supermarket. You are going to get what you pay for. If you want to buy the best product, you will most likely have to pay for it.

How to learn to invest in the US stock market?

Honestly, the most learning you’ll get will come from experience. However, there are various sources that will allow you to know more about this world. In principle, there are famous personalities in the investment world that you can follow, such as:

• Benjamin Graham
• Warren Buffet
• peter lynch
• John Templeton
• Thomas Rowe Price Jr.
• John Neff
• Jesse Livermore
• John (Jack) Bogle
• And many more

All of them have written books and distributed information about their prospects. However, the important thing is not to copy the investment styles, but that you learn the strategies that they have used to beat the market and use them from your own perspective and in a way that applies to your own reality.

Another way to learn is by using free investment apps, which work like a kind of game. Once you practice and understand how the system works, you will be more confident and can start doing it on your own.

Finally, there are investment courses. And while some are pretty good, there are also plenty on the net that are inexperienced, incompetent, or just plain frauds. For that reason, it is recommended that you see what people have actually achieved, before going for one of these.

How much is the minimum to invest in the US stock market?

Generally speaking, there is no minimum amount to invest in the US stock market. However, according to the experience of many, investing very small amounts can be counterproductive, since you will have to pay commissions and fees to brokerage firms and they will keep your profits. For this reason, it is best to start with a minimum amount of $1,000.

How much is the maximum amount that can be invested in the US stock market?

There is no maximum amount to invest in the US stock market. In fact, the world’s richest people have investments that increase the value of their wealth by billions of dollars. This becomes such a problem that it takes them a lot of effort to withdraw their money like any regular person.