My Experience Investing in Stocks

 

The previous blog I wrote was about my internship with Clever Harvey's JuniorMBA programme where I chose to learn about finance and the different things that come under that. That course introduced me to aspects of finance that I didn't even know existed. Not only that, after I was done with the course I started investing in a few stocks myself. Today, I am sharing my experience with you as a 17 year old who enjoys studying the stock market and investing in stocks.

Let me start by telling you a few things I have learnt. Investments in itself is an umbrella term. Investments include fixed deposits, initial public offerings, mutual funds and -the topic we are going to cover today- stocks. There are so many more things that come under the term "investments" but I am going to write about the one that interests me the most.

Stocks are a portion of the company that is sold to the public. Anyone with proper documentation is qualified to buy or invest their money in stocks of any company. Let's try to understand why companies sell stocks. Companies sell stocks to earn money or rather earn capital. It may be to overcome losses, capital for new ideas and inventions, pay off debts etc. Stocks can be studied with the help of a company's financial documents. Some of these documents are the balance sheet and income sheet. The companies are legally objected to provide this information to their investors. 

When I started investing and studying stocks a month ago, I was overwhelmed to say the least. I had so many questions like- which company is the best? Which company will yield me the most profit? What if this company sees extreme depression throughout the upcoming years? and so on. I then took a step back from these thoughts and started going through the balance sheets and studying the profits and losses of the big companies like Apple, Reliance etc. as well as some other smaller companies to get a better understanding of small cap and large cap companies. Once I started properly going through them with the help of my father, who started buying stocks himself only a few years back, I was starting to grow confident. 

Analyzing the companies' current situations made me realize how demand for a stock increases the price of the stock significantly. I kept going with my research and I made a list of companies that interested me. I asked my father for help and I discussed my research and findings with him. I asked for a small amount of money from my father and he taught me how to buy stocks. I bought 4-5 stocks from a few different companies He also showed me the stocks he owned himself and we studied the progress of those companies together. My father has given me access to his account to help me learn and study the stocks on my own. Since then I have been going through the stock market myself and looking at the financial statements of different companies to learn more about this fascinating world of finance.

I would recommend anyone who is interested in finance to start their own research. In this world of technology, knowledge is easily available to us. So I say no matter how young you are, ask your parents for some help and invest small amounts if money in stocks. This also goes for anything else that interests you. You can learn about anything and everything today, so instead of taking this priviledge for granted, learn something new and exciting.