Beginner’s guide to investing: checklist and expert comments

(MENAFN- Shout Bravo) The investment app Nemo Money has put together a guide for new investors, with all the steps that experts say you need to take into consideration when investing in stocks for the first time.


The first step Nemo Money recommends is to ‘define your why’, or set goals for yourself - are you building savings for a long term objective like retirement or buying property, or are you more interested in using investment as a passive income stream?

Next, investors should decide how much they are willing to invest. It’s a common misapprehension that investing involves putting in a large amount of money, especially with options like fractional shares that let you buy a smaller portion of a company’s stock.

Nemo Money urges investors to educate themselves about investing, the stock market and how to analyse a company’s performance. There are plenty of resources available online as well as books written with beginners in mind.

Investors should also decide what their risk tolerance is - higher risk investments can offer bigger profits, but might also mean a higher chance of incurring a loss.

ETFs are highlighted by Nemo Money as one way to ease into investing. Exchange-traded funds track the performance of a number of different companies at once, meaning that your investment is spread more broadly.

Choosing the right investment platform is important, too. The ideal platform or app will have a high level of security, protecting your deposit as well as your data. Some investment platforms charge a commission, so investors should read terms and conditions carefully so there are no surprises.

Investors should be prepared to invest their money long term. While short term profits are possible, you might stand to gain more from investing over a longer period, both in terms of the stock price increasing and from dividend payouts.

Nemo Money encourages investors to ‘ignore the noise’ - stock prices might fluctuate, as well as investor and analyst sentiment towards the company, but don’t get thrown off your strategy by every piece of information that comes in.

Tracking your progress is the next step, once you are investing. You can choose how often you want to check the performance of your portfolio. Some people choose to check it more often than others, but checking it too often can make some investors feel stressed out and make it harder for them to see the big picture. However, others find watching the short term fluctuations in the market exciting and interesting.

Lastly, investors should keep learning and evolving. The more of an understanding you develop of the stock market and the different assets you can invest in, the more you can benefit from the opportunities available.

Nicholas Scott, Executive Vice President at Nemo Money, comments:
“At Nemo Money, we think investing shouldn’t be intimidating - we wanted to create a checklist that could help beginners get started. One of the things that can put people off investing is feeling that it’s difficult to understand. Learning about the stock market is easy (especially with Nemo Money!) and empowering. At Nemo Money what we suggest is to pick up this knowledge as you go, starting off with just a small investment and build up as you get more comfortable.”

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