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What in the flipping flip is the stock market?
What in the flipping flip is the stock market?
Well, hello there! First off, rest assured, this is not a 'sales e-book', or anything leading you to a sales page. I'm not after your money. I want to educate, entertain and enrich. I want to teach YOU what the stock market is. I will say at the forefront this information below is incredible, but it does apply mainly to my readers in the United States of America. Other countries have different laws, regulations and various retirement programs. I know some people who can help you out if you live in Canada. At the end is my contact information. Regardless, thank you for opening and reading this article. You rock!
MY guess is you're between the ages of 10 and 36, and you have very little, or no idea what an IRA is, how to create one, fund one, find one, open one, trade in one, or how finances really work. HEY, that's totally fine! The current education system in the U.S. likely didn't teach you any relevant, Real Life information when you were in high school or college, although I'm sure you crammed for tests and memorized tons of more or less meaningless facts and equations just so you could pass.
IRA?
An IRA stands for Individual Retirement Account. It is set up through a financial institution that allows an individual to save for retirement with tax-free growth or on a tax-deferred basis. There are three main types of IRAs: Traditional, Roth, and Rollover, each with different advantages.
401K?
401K Is a retirement savings plan sponsored by an employer. It lets workers save and invest a piece of their paycheck before taxes are taken out. Taxes aren't paid until the money is withdrawn from the account.?
What?s the main difference? Well, truthfully, not much. You can trade through an IRA much easier and you don't have to be employed to have one. Most good companies offer a 401k, but it's through them so their rules apply.
You see most 401Ks and IRAs are all tied to the stock market in some form or fashion.Therefore, let me define two more terms for you.
The stock market is an everyday term we use to talk about a place where stocks and bonds are traded, meaning bought and sold. For many people, that is the first thing that comes to mind regarding the term - investing.
A stock purchase is literally buying a small ownership in a company. The word stock is also synonymous with the words share and equity.
Take Wal-Mart for example. It is publicly traded, which means it is traded openly on the stock market. That means people can literally buy ownership of Wal-Mart. Therefore, if you bought one share of Wal-Mart and you spent $70 per share, with that one share you would, quite frankly, own .000001% of Wal-Mart! How cool is that? Now, the question begs, why would anyone do that?
WMT
The simple answer is to make money. As an example, let's say Tammy saves up $700 a year and buys 10 shares of Wal-Mart every year for 20 years. That's $14,000.00 of total monies saved and deposited. Without getting deep on you. let's say, bottom of the barrel, you make 2% interest on your $700 annual investment. After 20 years you would have $17,196.48.
Not too shabby, huh? That's what 'investment' really means: having your money work for you. Ya know, make money while you sleep, work smarter not harder, all that jazz. It's not scummy or illegal, weird, or odd. It's just the way the world turns. Have you ever wondered how Warren Buffet, Donald Trump and others become so wealthy? They invest, they save and they prepare! They make their money work for them.
Okay, you've got the idea of what a stock is now. There are countless companies to choose from. Here's what I like about IRAs. You can easily set up an IRA online. They are free to start and require about 10 minutes of your time. It's almost exactly like opening up a bank account.
What type of IRA should you open? In my non-licensed, just regular down to earth, real life dude opinion, if you are under the age of 36 you should open up a ROTH IRA. That way, the money you deposit is after taxes.
Slow down. What the heck does that mean?
A ROTH IRA is set up through a financial institution that allows an individual to save for retirement with tax-free growth. You deposit after tax money and when you withdraw the money after you retire,it is tax free! This is important because you'll be paying a lot more in taxes when you're older than what you pay right now. (At least, I hope so).
Each year an individual can deposit $5,000 into a ROTH IRA. My 20 year olds reading this, I know that sounds like a lot of money now, but it isn't. Do everything in your power to save $5,000 a year and put it into a ROTH IRA. Bake sales, car washes, selling furniture you don't need or use, overtime on Saturdays, I don't care what you do, just do something! Lock it up!
Because once you do that, you can begin taking part in what I call the "It's so easy a cave man with Internet access and a computer can do it" plan. Ready?
AAPL
Consider simply buying shares of Apple Inc., $5,000 worth a year, every year. Below is a stock chart of AAPL.
Why AAPL?
I have 6 solid reasons to choose AAPL
AAPL is everywhere. Look around you. Do you see any AAPL products? You probably do. Either your Iphone, your MAC book, Ipad, AAPL TV, or Ipod. I can't vividly recall walking into someone's house and not seeing at least one AAPL product somewhere, on TV or in movies
They are a great company. Maybe this is slightly an opinion, but I doubt I will have tons of people disagreeing with me
They have cash; a lot of cash. Cash is king. I'm sure you've heard the term. To date, AAPL has well over 40 Billion in free cash flow. You don't have to be a money wizard to know that's a lot of money
AAPL is one of the most popular stocks on the market and have been for a long time
In 2014 they had a 1:7 split. What this means is a year or so ago, AAPL was trading around $700. After the split, each share was only $100. This makes
AAPL more affordableAAPL pays dividends. Whoa, what is that word??
A dividend is "a sum of money paid regularly (typically quarterly) by a company to its shareholders out of its profits (or reserves)."
What this means, ladies and gentleman, is when you buy $5,000 worth of shares in AAPL, the actual company, Apple Inc., receives $5,000 of monies to do whatever the company wants to do with it. As a big "thank you for your money", Apple Inc. will give you a small amount of money back every three or four months. It's called a dividend. And a good percentage in the stock market is 2-4% annually. Boom. Done. Simple.
Oh - one other really cool tidbit of information. In the stock market, if you own shares of certain companies you can rent them out! Just like if you own two houses and you only live in one of them, what would you do with the other home? Probably rent it out, right? You can do the same thing in the stock market. It's called covered calls! More on that later. Upon doing that strategy, that 2-4% annually can look a little more like 10-12% annually. Hey, now we are talking!
Let me throw this one at you. $5,000 invested every year, for 20 years, with an interest rate of 10% annually, comes to $316,403.68. You will have contributed $100k. You will have earned $216,403.68 in growth. "Well, well, well Clarence, I think we have a winner." **Said in a very thick British accent.* Let me just show you what the first 10 years would look like. See below for a chart.
I did only 10 years because by now your attention span is lessening. ;)
That's how money can work for you, friends, and 10-12% is just the 30-year stock market average. Over enough time, the average investor can expect to see this kind of return. In the future, I hope to teach you how 10-12% becomes your monthly expectation rather than your yearly, but more on that later too...
Alright. Thus far I think I've summed things up pretty well. Let's wrap this up with:
Simple steps
Right now you're looking at 4 simple steps to begin to fund your retirement. And from a non-licensed professional, let me give you those 4 simple steps.
Step one: Create a 401K through your employer, or a ROTH IRA outside of your employer, or both. optionsexpress.com is a great broker and you can fund a ROTH IRA through them. They make it super simple and in the future, very easy to trade through, if you decide you want to. There are truly, hundreds of companies you can create an IRA with. Optionsexpress.com, is just one of the many.
Step two: Start saving money. Put 10% of every paycheck into a savings account or you can set it up so 10% of your paycheck goes directly into your 401K or ROTH IRA.
Step three: Leave your 401K alone. Most are hard to trade through, some are not, but a 401K is definitely more complex than a ROTH IRA. To make this wildly simple, the money you put into your 401K is invested in the stock market through something called funds. These funds can be directly invested into the company you work for and then your company can reinvest your money however they choose to, or your money can be invested into mutual funds. A mutual fund is like a basket of companies. You have company A,B,C,D,E,F,G and BOND AX, BX, CX, DX and they are all grouped together. Their performance is averaged and the return on your money is the average return of the collective basket of investments.
Step four: Buy shares through your ROTH IRA of a company you love and interact with every day. There are literally thousands of stocks you could choose from. Don't let all of those opportunities cloud you. How many cars can you drive at any given time? How many restaurants can you eat at at any given time? The answer is one. Less is more in trading. If you want to learn to beef up your investing and trading skills, hey, I teach the world how to do it for free. Find me at reallifetrading.com - Real people, Real traders, Real results.
Until next time friends, Love life, live life and trade it!Jerremy Alexander Newsome
Email: jerremy@reallifetrading.com
Happy to serve as CEO of reallifetrading.com