During our second lesson of finance I was a bit more oriented regarding the stock market, the meaning of finance and the whole point of the project: How would you invest $3,000 dollars? I was clear with the idea of the unit, but I had no idea the importance of the term INVESTMENT; it was time to research.
After navigating through Internet I finally started feeling comfortable with my ideas. Even though my research was all about investment for beginners I got to understand little pieces of information:
What is the importance of investing? How do you invest? What should you keep in mind when investing?What is the difference between mutual funds, and stocks? In what markets can you invest? How will investing now, and then, affect you in the future? Depending on your purpose, what should you invest in?
Investing is extremely important in someone’s life. Before it was optional, but now it is a necessity. Investment is basically: “expend money with the expectation of achieving a profit or material result by putting it into financial schemes, shares, or property, or by using it to develop a commercial venture”. Personally, I have no idea what this means, so in other words according to Investopedia, investing is equal to putting money to work for you. IT MAKES MORE SENSE! |
With that in mind we separated in groups and that’s where I began investigating, to at least know what I was talking about. Some of the information that I found the most interesting and useful for people with few knowledge of the topic was the following:
- When you invest only in one same stock market you face a huge risk. If that stock market for some reason has some issues and they loose everything, you do as well. So, if you invest you should invest in various industries, because in case one of them shuts down, then you will lose but you have another backup.
- “Investing isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme” (http://www.investopedia.com/university/beginner/)
- When you spot an industry that’s growing rapidly, and you’re able to identify the best company within it that has an undervalued (The value is lower than it should) stock. It’s now time to invest! (http://www.wealthlift.com/blog/investing-for-beginners-how-to-start-investing-with-100/)
After investigating independently we came together as a group and we were able to share what we had learned, and we wrote the most important points in the board. It was a way to visualize what we had learned, having the information written down as a tool for the future. Since each group had to write down what they had learned we organized all our ideas in Trello, so that everyone could check out the learning of our peers, using it as a resource. Until know, as a group, we don’t know exactly what we want to invest the money on, but at least we already understand the basics of investment, and we are pretty sure that we will invest either in mutual funds or stocks, even if they are aggressive. Many times starting a new project about something you have no idea is really confusing, especially when your other teammates are comfortable with the topic. The best way to understand what you are doing is by investigating your purpose and the main idea of your project. At first I had no idea what investing was, but in about 30 minutes I was able to understand the most important points to collaborate with my group. Also it is extremely important to have a balanced group, meaning, people that know and others that don’t, because while one person gives detailed and specific information, the other one might be more general and try to be more clearer with the information transmitted to everyone |