Howie’s Stock Market Investing Lessons...

I am on a mission to ask everyone I meet if they invest/ trade and use Stocktwits. Everyone should. I get asked all the time from beginner’s how to start investing and I have chipped away at a long list the best I can to help people frame the business of investing. Here we go:

1. The business of Wall Street is rigged. Yep…I said it. AND, The FED has the best data and likes to time the market. Deal with it.

2. The books are cooked. Yep, assume every public company does it.

Investing gets way easier once you are at peace with 1 and 2.

3. Keep your eyes and ears open in everyday life for ‘catalysts’…they show up in malls, the behavior of friends and family, and simple price and volume charts you can get for free anywhere on the web. Catalysts are what give meaning to the two dumbest workds on Wall Street – ‘cheap and ‘expensive’. Understanding catalysts that will drive prices will unlock most of the mysteries of investing.

4. Leverage is a tactic, not a strategy. This is a life lesson beyond trading and investing. Lance Armstrong would have been left alone if he walked away after 3 or even 4 Tour De France victories. He decided to leverage himself to 7 wins at all cost and a comeback that was an in your face to people on the other side of that trade.

5. Practice saying ‘NO’ a lot. If you tell people you invest or trade, you will get pitched all the time. The art of curation applies to every investor and trader. There are tons of FREE tools to do this. Ask anytime.

6. Pay for mentorship and never stop. Brian Lund has a great post and a solid list of people worth paying for. Treat yourself to good equipment as you will spend a great deal of time with it.

7. Follow the Money. You do NOT need to be first and you should never be last. The longer you spend learning the language of the market, the better you will get at this. I believe Stocktwits is the best product available to learn the language. We will continue to improve it along these lines always.

8. 99.9 percent of all investors will crush the averages over time if they simply dollar cost average into low cost ETF’s. JC says ‘equal weighted’indexes just may be the best way.

9. If you want to invest in stocks, do so to crush the averages. It is your ‘founders’ money, your ‘entrepreneurial’ money. This is your non-diversified money that should be focused on solving a problem…specifically YOUR problem of not being wealthy!

Hope this gets you started on the right path.