Buying shares?! a way to invest..! - The Orange Room

Silentscream

Hello all,

as you noticed from the title, i have a goal in mind which is to invest in something on both the short/long range in order to get eventually an extra income no matter how small it may be.

i'm a bit at a loss when it comes to such financial matters.
the only experience i have with shares or any sort of investment is buying 30 shares in OTV. other than that! am clueless..
actually who am i kidding, i'm even at a loss when it comes to OTV shares which i only have the receipt from the bank that i bought them while not knowing if i should get an owner certificate of some sort. as well as not knowing how would they benefit me on the long run.

so to cut this short, as i drifted off subject, am looking to invest!

once again as i stated before, my sole aim is to have in a few years a certain extra income which might be yearly or quarterly or whichever is offered at that place that id invest in.

so any advice about such issue, is truly appreciated:)

thanks in advance.

Ashrafieh_101

If you're looking for low risk investments where your investment cannot lose value then you can put your money in a CD or in bonds. If you can take more risk then you can buy an index fund like SPY or QQQQ which track the S&P500 and the Nasdaq100 respectively. These offer much better returns over the long run. Also you won't have to worry about following individuals company. When the market goes up they go up and vice versa. Good luck!

Silentscream

as much as i hate to admit it!
you lost me after "CD ......nasdaq100"

could you elaborate a abit more on the advice you just gave! as in more info about the options you mentioned, as well as whom should i contact if i decided to go through any of them..

as for the risk id like to take, well am willing to go both ways!
whts the minimum sum of $ i could start with.. and wht would b the worst case scenario possible..

thanks for the help :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ashrafieh_101

If you're looking for low risk investments where your investment cannot lose value then you can put your money in a CD or in bonds. If you can take more risk then you can buy an index fund like SPY or QQQQ which track the S&P500 and the Nasdaq100 respectively. These offer much better returns over the long run. Also you won't have to worry about following individuals company. When the market goes up they go up and vice versa. Good luck!

CPL

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silentscream

Hello all,

as you noticed from the title, i have a goal in mind which is to invest in something on both the short/long range in order to get eventually an extra income no matter how small it may be.

i'm a bit at a loss when it comes to such financial matters.
the only experience i have with shares or any sort of investment is buying 30 shares in OTV. other than that! am clueless..
actually who am i kidding, i'm even at a loss when it comes to OTV shares which i only have the receipt from the bank that i bought them while not knowing if i should get an owner certificate of some sort. as well as not knowing how would they benefit me on the long run.

so to cut this short, as i drifted off subject, am looking to invest!

once again as i stated before, my sole aim is to have in a few years a certain extra income which might be yearly or quarterly or whichever is offered at that place that id invest in.

so any advice about such issue, is truly appreciated:)

thanks in advance.

Well as far as I know there are two types of shares. Depending on the company.

There are shares where you earn a dividend of the company's income, additionally to the varying value of the share itself.

And there are those who don't have the dividend, but maybe are more promising in their future values..

I see here you are asking about the first.

Either way, I wouldn't really encourage buying any shares if you are not really a good market sniffer, unless you are doing it for fun like buying a couple of shares for a few hundred dollars... otherwise stay away. If the company goes bad because of some stupid CEO policy of because of dramatic changes in supply/demand, your shares could go next to peanuts in salvage value.

That is why you should be careful to know in what to invest, what are the domains that will grow in the coming 5 years? 10 years?

One big example is Green products & Solutions... it is growing already, but it still has vast potential for the coming years (hell yeah to clean up all that pollution we left for decades), so that's a good option to invest in such programs...and viewing that it will enforced through governments.

Ashrafieh_101

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silentscream

as much as i hate to admit it!
you lost me after "CD ......nasdaq100"

could you elaborate a abit more on the advice you just gave! as in more info about the options you mentioned, as well as whom should i contact if i decided to go through any of them..

as for the risk id like to take, well am willing to go both ways!
whts the minimum sum of $ i could start with.. and wht would b the worst case scenario possible..

thanks for the help :)

No problem!

A CD is a certificate of deposit. You put your money with the bank and it's blocked for some period of time (3/6/9 months, 1-30 yrs) and you get interest on it. This way you can't lose anything.

S&P is an index which means a collection of many stocks. In the case of the S&P500 it's a collection of 500 companies. The Nasdaq 100 is an index of 100 companies (mostly tech companies). By buying these indexes, you become diversified and don't suffer a huge loss if some company's stock plummets or goes bankrupt.
You can see how good these indexes have been over the years:
^IXIC: Summary for NASDAQ COMPOSITE - Yahoo! Finance
^GSPC: Summary for S&P 500 INDEX,RTH - Yahoo! Finance

Aroma

SilentScream,u would like to invest in Lebanon or maybe u want to open ur investments to regional and foreign markets such as Gulf ones.Can u specify plz as a start?!

SeekNirvana

This could be a good place to start: The Investment FAQ: Home Page

LEBANESE-CIA

Silentscreem ,
- what is the amount in mind you plan to invest ?
- what is the period of your projected investment?
- and what is your risk factor level and your desired average return?

knowing the above combination it would be easier to set and choose some of the financial instruments on the market.
So Elaborate more in numbers so i can share with you what venue to take : ) !

(N.B: i understand that you are a novice, meaning you should not be thinking of "index" or "options", its not for you at this stage.)

El

is it safe now to invest in lebanese market, such as solidere ? Knowing that the prices of the shares dropped .is there a risk that it will continue the dropping after this world crisis?

TmeniAzar

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ashrafieh_101

If you're looking for low risk investments where your investment cannot lose value then you can put your money in a CD or in bonds. If you can take more risk then you can buy an index fund like SPY or QQQQ which track the S&P500 and the Nasdaq100 respectively. These offer much better returns over the long run. Also you won't have to worry about following individuals company. When the market goes up they go up and vice versa. Good luck!

CD is the safest bet at this point, you need to make sure that you open multiple accounts if the amount of money you have is more than the insured amount; for example in the US, bank accounts are insured up to $100K thus if the bank is bankrupt you are guaranteed to get up to 100k thus is you happen to have more than that, lets say $400K, you can open multiple accounts (one in your name, one in your wifes name if you are married, one with your name then your wifes name, one with you wifes name then your name, ... you got the idea .. just make sure all your money is insured)

I think investing in index is a bad idea at this point because the markets are tanking down so you know for sure you will loose money especially at this point it is not clear if the bottom is reached, only when you are confident enough that the markets hit the bottom and they will start recovering only then invest in index funds.

As for regular stocks it is very risky (I dont know about lebanese stocks) you need to know what you are doing; in general get away from consumer stocks (lot of people lost their savings and 401k so in the near future people will tend to spend less) and definitely get away from banks and financial institutions stocks. My advice is dont get involved, if you like to experiment keep your eye on Gold stocks (stocks of companies that mine for gold and so on ...)