Modern Investing for Dummies

Along with the COVID-19 Pandemic, there was another wave that hit the human race. It was the Investment Wave.

Be it stocks, crypto, or NFTs: everyone became more aware and educated about their finance. But with this wave came an enormous overwhelming wave of information about personal investing which swept us all into a sea of information leaving us in the middle of nowhere.

But don’t worry, I’m here to help you swim your way out!

Accept it, we have all been there: the morbid situation where the majority of people we know or interact with are talking about what stock to buy, which crypto to invest in, or just conversing about the future world of NFTs - and to be truly honest I hated every minute of those conversations.

You ask WHY? Because I genuinely had no idea and considering my super consistent way of living I had even less desire to go out of my way to learn especially about FINANCES, I mean unless you are a finance prodigy is it even normal to want to learn about something that no education system ever focused or even talked about. What I intend to convey is how utterly un-important would it be to learn about Finances which has been ignored by every educational institution so blatantly, but the pandemic slapped us on our faces with the answer - (in case u didn’t take the hint) - “Yes you have to know your FINANCES”.

Just to give you a little insight on what this story holds for you is I’ll walk you through Stocks, crypto, and NFTs pursuing you to invest in them answering these four questions.

1. What is it?
2. Do you even have to learn them?
3. Where to get started?
4. How did I do it?

In case you decided to stay, let's run into the wild world of Finances.

1. Stocks

a. What is it?

Stocks are an investment that gives you ownership of a corporation. Yeah no shit, that’s something new I told all of you 🤷🏻‍♀️

Okay let me break it down for you, stocks are small parts of a company, that when someone like us buys gives us the ownership of the company for the value of the worth of that stock. So technically if you buy a stock, you are partly an owner of that company, crazy right. Wait, I’ll emphasize the basic fact again :

b. Do I even have to learn to invest in STOCKS?

I mean why should you when you can just let your money sit idle in your bank account and Isn’t stock supposed to be risky. You can try all you want to talk yourself out of investing but you know what they say:

"How many millionaires do you know who have become wealthy by investing in savings accounts? I rest my case." — Robert G. Allen

Can you please come to the point? *eye rolls*

Well when you buy a stock of a company, the better it performs in the market the more profit you gain in terms of dividends and likewise, if it fails to rock the market you know the answer--yes you bear the losses too. And that is why stocks are a little risky investment: because it depends on a lot of factors, such as the company’s goal for the next 10 years, market reaction to any of their newly launched product, their reputation, government policies, and a lot of other things.

I do not disagree that stocks require a little hard work and effort but don’t everything we do need effort now? May it be eating or earning the precious money that you want to multiply by investments?

If you still aren’t satisfied, here are something for nerds:

Stocks do not go up every year, but if you let it compound it works wonders. Don't just take my word for it, google your heart out

For example, look at this McDonald's Stock chart:

You get what I’m trying to say right?

Fine, I’m just messing around, I’ll explain what I mean if you just plainly look at this chart there are two things you can figure out:

• [ ]It shows some charts - for the timeline - 2004 to 2021
• [ ]There are a lot of ups and downs but if u compare the graph point from its initial to the final state, its distinctively high, which started from around $49.56 in 2004  and increased to $200 ish in 2021.

Now, what can we derive from this?

As I said stock works wonders when left alone to compound and a lot of factors like management decision, customer response, company’s plans for future projects, etc. affect the highs and lows of a company’s market value.

c. Where to get started?

We can all agree to the fact that doing anything & everything becomes easier a million folds if you study enough about it, before just diving right in. Our stock journey isn’t going to be any different. I believe rather than giving in to the mass misconceptions like: “OMG, Stocks are so hard”, “it’s very risky”, “it might wipe you out” we should give it a try. A systematic try at learning its ins and outs - basically knowing stocks your way.

• You ask me where to start - YOUTUBE, just search for a video that suits your way of learning. For the starters' type: ‘Stocks for dummies’
• If the free sourced information library doesn’t get you started take a high rated Udemy or Coursera course
• If you still cannot get yourself to just get started, find a friend or an acquaintance that knows stocks and you can trust learning the basics from

But down the line investing in the stocks is something you will have to learn on your own, it’s a  beautiful journey that in the end, you will have fun strolling through.

d. How did I do it?

I started learning with some youtube videos, to be precise it was this one (no judgment please).

This learning approach worked out for me and then I ended up watching their stock playlists and Voila! No, I did not become an instant Stock investor, but a journey of 1000 miles was already started.

Next, I took up a more structured way to study - a Udemy course. Not even kidding I spent a lot of time watching the course trailers for a lot of stock courses until I found the one, that I would sit and complete.

• [ ]Stock market Basics- Full Course
• [ ]The Complete Foundation Stock Trading Course
• [ ]Advanced Stock Trading Course + Strategies

And a little market insight from some self-proclaimed financial investors in my family and friends and I was ready to start my voyage of gaining ownership of a lot of corporations, again to be precise ‘partial ownership’.

2. Cryptocurrency

But before we jump into Crypto and NFTs let’s understand two basic terms :

Blockchain : So any system that cannot be tampered or changed,the data once entered is permananent and is completely public in order to acheive transparency, trust and security in the database.In my words, a digital ledger that you cannot literally mess with 😂

Decentralized : As the name suggests removing a central authority, to be more precise it is the concept of distributing the contol over a transparent distributed network or a shared web of authorities.

a. What is it?

In its most basic meaning, cryptocurrency means digital currency, but what makes it so unique and talk of time is its blockchain-backed technology which makes it impossible for this currency to be tampered with and there’s a transparent ledger that maintains the entire transaction history of the currency which can be viewed by literally anyone.

b. Do I even have to learn to invest in CRYPTO?

Whaaaaaat is that even a question- Yes, you have to learn everything about Crypto investing

WHY:

1. It is the future of all currencies, believe it or not, a transparent system of transaction with a near to impossible possibility to be corrupted or messed around with is what we all need since forever.

2. It is decentralized eliminating the issue of a single point of failure

3. There’s no requirement for third-party institutions like banks for making the transactions and hence these transactions are a lot faster.

4. It’s going to be huge

5. It is private. It’s very hard to trace your crypto account back to you because you create a new private id when you start investing in crypto that in no way connects to your real-life id. So it gives you anonymity.

6. No one can take it away from you unless you want it so, it’s yours no matter what

7. (my personal favorite) It’s high liquidity, you can easily get your money into ur online wallets or account whenever you want.

c. Where to get started?

You know the drill:

• [ ]Youtube
• [ ]Paid courses
• [ ]Reach out to someone you know who knows

d. How did I do it?

For me, I felt a sudden rush of FOMO on Instagram and straight away took a paid course on Udemy:

1. The Complete Cryptocurrency Course: More than 5 Courses in 1

2. Cryptocurrency Investment Course 2022: Fund your Retirement!

And that was all I needed to get started.

3. NFTs

a. What is it?

Non-Fungible Tokens are unique thus cannot be exchanged for any other item and it again lives on the blockchain. What makes it so hyped up is that it provides unique ownership to digital assets on the blockchain.

So every time you own an NFT, your digital asset gets a unique hash value, token name, and a token id that gets stored on the blockchain giving your digital asset a unique identity and ownership.

b. Do I even have to learn to invest in NFTs?

I believe NFTs are here to stay, so we might as well know about it.

But now the question arises why NFTs?

1. It is very easy to copy and redistribute digital files, and almost impossible to prove the ownership but NFTs solve that problem,
2. There are infinite possibilities of how it’s going to be used in the future, be it the gaming industry, metaverse, exclusive invite eligibilities, or just the pure peace of owning a cool digital asset
3. High liquidity, it can be sold for cash in return or exchange for NFTs
4. No one can legally copy your NFT
5. It’s secure and decentralized
6. No one can steal, duplicate or destroy your digital asset, how cool is that now.

c. Where to get started?

I’m not repeating, there’s no way out you have to just sit down and self learn about it

d. How did I do it?

Since it’s a relatively new investment area, I needed a sure-shot resource that doesn’t mess up my basics.

1. NFT Masterclass: Buy, Create and Sell NFTs

2. NFT Investing Masterclass - Pro-Tips about NFT Investing

And I’m still in the learning phase for this, what a bummer right?

Conclusion

Long story short, no investing is as hard and risky as the rumors say and neither is it as easy as you want it to be. And with all the uncertainty in the world right now, I think it is always a good idea to be financially educated with the right resources. So what's stopping you from being the biggest investor of all time?