Don’t hesitate, act (but with sense)

There’s no question about it: if you want to speculate on the stock market, you need good nerves. Not everyone can win, and where there are shining winners, losers are not far away. You need courage, because your money is at stake.
Only ever invest as much as your financial situation allows. Set yourself limits and budgets and stick to them stubbornly. Prepare yourself, inform yourself (e.g. via us), analyze. But there comes a point when you have to become active and take action.

It’s good to think about something, but when the moment has come, then act. Otherwise, one opportunity after another will pass you by and you will become more and more annoyed that you were too late again. But even if one opportunity after another passes you by, you must never forget one thing. There are opportunities every day, no matter how the market is performing. You just have to be alert and show the necessary flexibility, then new opportunities will always open up (sometimes more, sometimes less).

Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something or that everything is far too risky. Yes, it can be risky, but it is manageable if you are well prepared and have good risk management. So take matters into your own hands rather than always listening to advice from others. Many of the world’s most successful traders started small and made mistakes. That’s just part of it. But perseverance and the ability to learn have made them what they are today.

Paper trading

Most online stockbrokers and banks offer so-called paper trading (paper money). An account where you can buy/sell paper money at real rates. This is a good way to get to know a trading platform and familiarize yourself with the procedures/processes. But when you feel you have now mastered the platform (which can be complex at times) sufficiently, then open a live account and trade with real money.

The problem with paper trading is this. If you know that you are only using “play money” and can’t lose anything anyway (except virtually), you will act and react very differently. You will probably be more courageous, buy shares that you would not buy in real life because the risk is too high, etc. In other words: If you spend too long with paper trading, you will get into the habit of a style that doesn’t suit you at all in real life.

Remember: there is a considerable difference between investing 25,000 francs/euros of your own hard-earned money in securities and simply using paper money without the possibility of a real (and certainly painful) loss.

Don’t get angry, learn from it

Don’t get angry if you have bought or sold a share too early/late. Almost nobody knows the perfect time. Learn from your mistakes, shake yourself up and move on. If you give up at the first or second failure, it’s better not to start at all. Stock market trading can be a shark tank, and if you want to swim with the big fish, you should be tactically clever and always know when to take risks and when to back off.

Remember: Even the best and most successful traders, who have already made billions, always have to deal with setbacks, and everyone had to learn the hard way at the beginning. If it were easy, everyone would do it and become filthy rich.

Trade, but with brains

Many people confuse stock market trading with a casino. Of course everyone wants to cash in on a big win. Of course everyone hopes for a big hit, and you often need luck. But please don’t put all your eggs in one basket, and especially don’t start out hoping for an investment that will double in no time. Such lucky moments are rare, and some you never have at all.

Be patient and invest in moderation. Don’t bet everything on speculative shares, but hedge defensively (keyword hedging).

Sometimes the best preparation is useless and everything goes wrong. Every share you buy falls shortly afterwards and your money dwindles more and more. Set yourself a target, a pain threshold so to speak, at which you want to get out. And this doesn’t just mean individual stocks, but the total value of your portfolio.

If you start with US$ 30,000 and after a few months the value has fallen to US$ 25,000 or less, then you should seriously consider getting out. Sometimes things just aren’t meant to be, that’s an old saying, and it applies here too. Trading is not for everyone, and before you incur further losses, at a certain point it is better to abandon the sails completely. Chalk it up to life experience and try something else.