Alright. I have the Robinhood app and I also have E*TRADE.
I was told to dumb Robinhood. Who should I go with? If you want we can take this to the PM
We could do it here because its free game for everybody and Gabi was interested too, so she can just read these posts.
Before we talk brokerage, let me lay out what im gonna have you do, and my reasoning behind it.
When it comes to investments, there are risk that go into it. And mfers always say diversify your portfolio to limit risk. What that means is that never put all your money into one stock. Cause if that company fails, all your money gets lost.
We not gonna do that here. What we gonna do, is we gonna invest into a mutual fund. A mutual fund is a fund that hold stocks in multiple companies and is professionally managed. So your basically investing in the fund, and then the fund takes your money and all the money from all the other investors, and buys stocks with it. So your profit/loss becomes a combined total of the profits and losses of all the stocks within the fund. This way, you risk way less. Cause in your fund, apple can take a 2% loss on a the day, but amazon can have a 3% gain, and your overall becomes a 1% gain.
There are a million funds out there investing in a million industries. But the fund we are gonna go with is a fund that tracks the s+p 500. The s+p500 is an index of the top 500 companies in the world. So your profits are based on a combination of how all 500 of the top companies in the world perform.
For you to lose money, the whole stock market has to crash. Which can happen, and will happen. If you look at the s and p 500, it has an annual average of close to 10% growth over 100 years. That includes years its lost. What that means is that you can have a year or two when your investment is in the negative, but you will always be making a profit in any 10 year period.
The only way to really lose money in the long term with an s and p tracking fund, is if America totally collapses. Which if that happens, we fucked anyway.
To get you started, the idea is to have you invest in a s+p 500 tracking fund, and then you have to invest money into it monthly. So every month you throwing more money into it.
And this is not only something to do to get you started, but this will be something you do when you become a seasoned investor too. At this point i got investments all over the place, even outside stocks, but I always keep around 70% of my money in an s+p tracking fund. Cause this is the for sure investment. Even if I lose my other shits, the s and p will make a millionaire.
And btw, the s+p is up almost 12% for the year. So we been eating.
In short, the plan for you is that we gonna find you an s+p 500 tracking mutual fund, and you gonna budget a number, $200-$300 or whatever you can a month, and throw it in there.
Let me know if the plan makes sense.