Trading VS Long Term Investing

I personally only stick to long term stocks and I've got £8k so far. I'm up £700 since I started in January.

then again I don't know shit about stocks, I only look at a companys history of increasing dividend payments and if it's a steady increase I invest.

Saying that, I might just say fuck it and invest all my money in index funds

>>1395784
I've invested in a value etf through vanguard last month(840.00 something). I'm up about 40 bucks. But I've never been too curious about trading until I started hanging out on this board.

When people say "you can't beat the market" and just invest in S&P 500 or whatever, are they talking about long term investments only?

If someone day trades, can they also not beat the market?

>>1395763

If you are going to invest you are probably better off putting your money into an s&p 500 passive index fund like SPY or VOO. The effort Buffet puts into picking his stocks are admirable.

Trading is more work, only 10 % break even and only 1 % make money. You'll need to learn a lot of theory, and in the end the results depend on your personality. I'd recommend getting "How to make money in stocks" and "Trade your way to financial freedom" if you want to learn to trade.

Do long term trading if you are shit and short term trading if you arent

>>1395797
I'll check those books out thanks . I went to a used book store and saw trading for dummies and say wth I'll read this. I think trading seems logical and could be done. But easier said than done. But I'll certainly give those books a look. I've read The Intelligent Investor, A book by Phil fisher I think . Can't remember the title. Common sense investing. (I think ) by John Bogle

>>1395794
when people say you can't beat the market they're generally talking about how extremely difficult it is to get higher returns from daytrading than you would from just indexing

generally only about 5% of investors manage to do it

>>1395808
>Phil fisher

probably common stocks and uncommon profits

>>1395802
I was going to use a simulators like the one on investopedia to see how I do for awhile before I just up and jump into it

>>1395809
>generally only about 5% of investors manage to do it

I'd argue it's even lower when you take longer and longer investment periods into consideration.

>>1395811
Bingo

I'd also recommend staying away the market for a while and maybe buy VIX assets. I think there'll be a crash soon. Vist Zero Hedge for more information (caution: very bearish).

>>1395809
Does this mean all of the people who pick stocks manually, who try to predict stock changes after earnings announcements, etc, are wasting their time? Because it seems pretty popular to do so, and it's kind of interesting if they are statistically wasting their time.

>>1395812
paper (simulated) trading only gives you an understand of how things like order types and such work. investing with your actual real dollars is always going to be different.

>>1395818

there are some mistakes you can't learn trading stock without doing. one of them is holding on a falling stock too long. another one is selling a winner too early. you should start out small, because you are going to lose money in the beginning.

>>1395817

Depends on your definition of wasting time. A lot of people manage to make an entire career out of convincing others they're better than their peers at picking stocks and, as such, you should invest your money with them for a nice little fee. In fact, it's kind of an entire industry.

The simplest way to think about it is that over time, pretty much everything reverts to the average. Since you're likely not retiring in the next few years you're going to be investing for a long time and every time you sell a stock, someone who thinks they're equally as smart as you is on the other end buying it. Now you may be the next super genius prodigy starchild and always be right... Or you may be closer to *average*. Just like the rest of us over a long time period.

That isn't to say there isn't some value to be had if you can invest in individual stocks smartly and not like some degenerate gambler. But you should also always have a large sum of your savings in something like an index fund that can effortlessly give you the returns of the total market.

If I'm looking to earn good dividend returns in the future to live off, should I invest in dividend focused indexes such as VYM - Vanguard High Dividend Yield index? I'm also planning on investing in the Vanguard REIT ETF.

How many indexes do you need? I currently have stocks in 10 different companies, and while I've had a 9% growth since January I've realised the commissions are killing me every month

>>1395855
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