Understanding the stock market can be a daunting task for any new investor.
Not only are there many concepts and technical terms to decipher, but nearly everybody will try to give you conflicting pieces of advice.
For example, if a stock in your portfolio falls in price, should you be accumulating additional shares at a lower price or should you be strategically cutting your losses?
Some experts will tell you one thing, while others will tell you precisely the opposite.
A Place to Start: Terminology
Before you drift into the many debates that the investing pundits are weighing in on, perhaps the most proactive step for a beginner is to simply learn to talk the same language as the pros.
Today’s infographic comes to us from StocksToTrade.com, and it covers the most important stock market terms that every new investor should know and understand. It’s enough to get any beginner on the same playing field, so they can start toying with the more nuanced or complex concepts in the investing universe.
While we don’t agree with the exact definitions of all of the terms, the list is adequate enough to get any new investor off the ground. It covers basic order terms like “bid”, “ask”, and “volume”, but it also goes into concepts like “authorized shares”, “secondary offerings”, “yield”, and a security’s “moving average”.
What’s Next?
Already got a handle on 40 of the most important stock market terms?
Visual Capitalist has a ton of other powerful visual resources for new investors, or anyone else hungry to learn about how markets work:
- Learn how to read stock charts
- Visualize the power of compound interest
- See this simple introduction to investing we published
- See how elite growth investors pick stocks
- Learn about the basics of ETFs and mutual funds, and even the differences between them
- Learn about the basics of creating a stock portfolio
- See how stock market indices work
- Understand 12 types of technical indicators for investing
- See how Warren Buffett’s brain works
Crush the above resources, and you’ll be market savvy in no time!