The Art of Investing Properly Articles | Investing

By: Guy Starbuck

For anyone who is a new investor, one of the most essential skills that you need to pick up is learning how to pick out the right investment. How exactly do you know which stock is a good investment and which one is an unwanted opportunity you should pass up? How best can you determine whether investing in a particular company or business is worth your while? In order to succeed at this, you need to know what to look for in an investment so that you can make the right decision and know whether it is the right one for you or not.

Investments are about much more than having a feeling about a particular opportunity. People who invest strictly on instinct are just gamblers and a lot of people end up in trouble when they focus on investing this way. Instead of doing this, you can easily take the time out and learn how to invest properly , how to spot a great investment when it presents itself and how to properly investigate such opportunities.

These are some bits of advice and various ideas about what exactly you should be looking for in an investment and this will help you to choose the right stock picks on a rather regular basis.

1. How much is the entire company worth? Don’t just look at the current price of stock but instead look at the price of the entire company. What is the P/E of the company?
2. Does the company buy back shares? You should look to invest in companies that are actively trying to reduce the number of outstanding shares.
3. Why did you choose this company to invest in? Is your reason based on solid information or is it based on speculation.
4. What is your knowledge of the company and/or their products?
5. Would you be willing to keep ownership in this stock for 10 or more years? If not, then it may not be worth it for you to buy it.
6. Don’t follow the crowd just because everyone else is saying it’s good. Make your own decisions based on facts and not hearsay.
7. Invest in what you know. The more you know about it, the higher your chance for success, investing in what you have little or no knowledge about will almost always result in failure.
8. Don’t buy or sell on emotion. Do some research and examine the facts thoroughly before you make an investment. 

If you stick to these laid out rules, you can be sure of getting on the fast track to becoming a very successful investor. People don’t become successful overnight; anyone who wants to become successful at investing needs to learn all that they possibly can and should never stop acquiring such knowledge. One of the many joys of investing is that there is always one new opportunity or the other to invest in and something new to be learned. You can also grow along with your portfolio and see your profits rise too.