9 Financial Strategies for
New Investors
Entering the world of investing can be both exciting and intimidating for the new and uninitiated. After all, there are countless stories of people failing and ending up in debt. But this does not have to become your reality. With the right strategies and mindset, you can set yourself up for long-term success and avoid the common pitfalls that you will encounter in investing.
This article will guide you through the essential financial strategies, so that you can have a solid foundation for investing and make informed financial decisions. From understanding your goals to developing your understanding of the market, you will be well-equipped to make informed decisions and achieve your financial goals.
Understand Your Investment Goals
Before investing, you must first define your clear, measurable, and realistic investment goals. This could be saving for retirement, buying a house, or funding your children’s education. Whatever these are, you need to quantify them by assigning a monetary value and setting the timeline for each goal.
The timeline of your goal determines your investment time horizon. This is the length of time that you expect to hold an investment, influencing which investments or strategies are most suitable for your goal.
- Short-term (less than 3 years): Savings accounts, certificates of deposit, short-term bonds and other safe investments that only last for less than 3 years and that you can easily liquidate for cash
- Medium-term (3 to 10 years): A balanced combination of high- and low-risk investments, like stocks and bonds
- Long-term (more than 10 years): Stocks, exchange-traded funds, real estate, and assets with higher returns and risk
Understand Your
Risk Tolerance
Investing in any asset involves risk. Understanding how much risk you can tolerate is crucial to making investment decisions. After all, you don’t want to be stressed about your investment every time its market value falls or an event threatens it.
To determine your risk tolerance, you need to consider your financial situation, investment goals, time horizon, and personal comfort with risk. A financial adviser can also help you assess it through a test. However, the true test of your risk tolerance is when you actually start investing and experience dips in the value of your investment and bearish phases of the market.
Educate Yourself
on the Basics
Before going into the world of investing, you must first have a good foundation of basic knowledge and skills, and a good mindset for investing. These include effective money management systems, investment systems, the various financial products available for investing, basic macroeconomics, and the market you are intending to tackle. You can learn the basics and the definition of various terms from a website, like Investopedia, and get into more detail with trustworthy investment books, like John “Jack” Bogle’s “The Little Book of Common Sense Investing” and Ramit Sethi’s “I Will Teach You To Be Rich”.
It is also encouraged to consult with a reputable financial adviser. Financial advisers can provide personalized advice that you can use to meet your financial goals. They can also help you build confidence when making your first investment decisions and experiencing different market movements for the first time.
Diversify Your
Investments
Diversifying your investments is the key to managing their risk exposure. It involves spreading your investments across different assets and sectors so that one asset or sector does not heavily impact your whole portfolio. This could involve investing in stocks from different industries or combining high-risk assets, like stocks, with lower-risk ones, like bonds.
However, diversifying may be difficult if you have limited time or funds or have no knowledge of how to do it yourself. This is why index funds and ETFs (exchange-traded funds) are good starting points. They offer built-in diversification while allowing you to invest in assets that you may not be able to with limited funds.
Practice with
Simulated Trading Platforms
Practicing with simulated trading platforms is one of the most invaluable tools for investors, from beginners to veterans in the market. It allows you to trade stocks, ETFs, forex pairs, options, and other securities with virtual money and mimicked real market conditions without any financial risk. Over time, using these platforms allows you to learn how to navigate market fluctuation, have hands-on experience in executing your trades, and build confidence in your decision-making.
The hands-on experience you can get from simulated trading is crucial for understanding the complexities of investing. It allows you to make mistakes, like any beginner would, without risking your money. And, you can test the viability of an investment strategy before implementing it in the market.
Develop a Disciplined Investment Approach
Emotions, particularly fear and greed, are the biggest enemies of any investor. Fear can cause investors to sell in a panic during market downturns, which locks in their losses and takes away any potential for a recovery. Greed pushes investors to chase after high returns without considering the risks, causing them to be overleveraged and increase the potential for significant losses.
A disciplined investment approach is the key to overcoming emotions in investing. You can achieve this by sticking to a well-defined strategy that sets clear rules for buying, selling, and risk management. The easiest to implement for beginners is dollar cost averaging, which involves investing a fixed amount regularly regardless of market conditions.
Review and Adjust Your Portfolio Periodically
Periodically reviewing and adjusting your portfolio is crucial to staying on track with your investment goals. It allows you to take into account changes in the market and your needs, risk tolerance, financial situation, and investment objectives over time. It lets you assess the performance of your portfolio and see where you can make the necessary adjustments to align with the time left for your investment goal or your new risk tolerance. For example, liquidating stock investments and reinvesting in more conservative assets is often done when the time horizon is 5 years or less to protect capital gains from sudden market downtrends.
Plan for the Unexpected
Before starting to invest, it’s essential to have an emergency fund and insurance. Your emergency fund will act as your financial safety net during unexpected events, like a job loss or medical emergency not covered by your insurance. As for your insurance, it will protect you and your family from significant financial setbacks.
With both of these, you have a financial cushion that ensures there’s no need to liquidate your investments when these happen. The worst that can happen is to have a financial setback without any of these safeguards, and you have no choice but to liquidate your investments regardless of the current market conditions.
Stay Informed and Connected
Staying on top of market trends and economic indicators is crucial for making informed investment decisions. Read the latest financial news, economic reports, and market analyses for the day and see how they affect market movements. Eventually, you will learn to see potential opportunities and risks that will help with your decision-making.
You can also join investment communities online. You can gain insights from more experienced investors, learn from their mistakes, and get updates on the latest developments. This will not only enhance your knowledge, but also help you stay motivated in your investment journey.