Stock Investing For Dummies is designed to give you a realistic approach to making money in stocks. It provides the essence of sound, practical stock investing strategies and insights that have been market-tested and proven from more than 100 years of stock market history. I don’t expect you to read it cover to cover, although I’d be delighted if you read every word! Instead, this book is designed as a reference tool. Feel free to read the chapters in whatever order you choose. You can flip to the sections and chapters that interest you or those that include topics that you need to know more about.
Introduction:
The stock market has been a cornerstone of the investor’s passive wealth- building program for over a century and continues in this role. Recent years have been one huge roller-coaster ride for stock investors. Fortunes have been made and lost. With all the media attention and all the talking heads on radio and television, the investing public still didn’t avoid losing trillions in a historic stock market debacle. Sadly, even the so-called experts who understand stocks didn’t see the economic and geopolitical forces that acted like a tsunami on the market. With just a little more knowledge and a few wealth-preserving techniques, more investors could have held onto their hard-earned stock market fortunes. Cheer up, though: This book gives you an early warning on those megatrends and events that will affect your stock portfolio. While other books may tell you about stocks, this book tells you about companies’ performance and financial condition and how their stock prices are affected.
Sidebars (boxes of text) in this book give you a more in-depth look at a certain topic. Although they further illuminate a particular point, these sidebars aren’t crucial to your understanding of the rest of the book. Feel free to read them or skip them. Of course, I’d love for you to read them all, but my feelings won’t be hurt if you decide to skip over them. The text that accompanies the Technical Stuff icon (see the forthcoming section “Icons Used in This Book”) can be passed over as well. The text associated with this icon gives some technical details about stock investing that are certainly interesting and informative, but you can still come away with the information you need without reading this text.
Stock Investing For Dummies is also quite different from the “get rich with stocks” titles that have crammed the bookshelves in recent years. It doesn’t take a standard approach to the topic; it doesn’t assume that stocks are a sure thing and the be-all, end-all of wealth-building. In fact, at times in this book, I tell you not to invest in stocks (or even to bet against them!). This book can help you succeed not only in up markets but also in down markets. Bull markets and bear markets come and go, but the informed investor can keep making money regardless. To give you an extra edge, I’ve tried to include infor-mation about the investing environment for stocks. Whether it’s politics or hurricanes (or both), you need to know how the big picture affects your stock investment decisions.
Contents:
- Surveying the World of Stock Investing
- Taking Stock of Your Current Financial Situation and Goals
- Defining Common Approaches to Stock Investing
- Recognizing Risk and Volatility
- Stock Investing through Exchange-Traded Funds
- Gathering Information
- Going for Brokers
- Investing for Long-Term Growth
- Investing for Income and Cash Flow
- Understanding Technical Analysis for Stock Investors
- Using Basic Accounting to Choose Winning Stocks
- Decoding Company Documents
- Emerging Sector and Industry Opportunities
- Small Cap Stocks, IPOs, and Motif Investing
- The Big Economic and Political Picture
- Discovering Screening Tools
- Understanding Brokerage Orders and Trading Techniques
- International Stock Investing Opportunities
- Getting a Handle on DPPs, DRPs, and DCA . . . PDQ
- Corporate and Government Skullduggery: Looking at Insider Activity
- Keeping More of Your Money from the Taxman
- Ten Indicators of a Great Stock
- Ten Ways to Profit in a Bear Market
- Ten Investments and Strategies That Go Great with Stocks
- Ten Investing Pitfalls and Challenges for 2020–2030