General Stupid Question Thread I Guess

It's hard to lose money on a stock as long as it doesn't go bankrupt, out of business, etc., and as long as you hold it long enough to sell for a profit. Is this generally true?

Dividends much?

Sure but you don't want to wait endlessly to earn a couple of dimes on your stock when the money could be used better.

>It's hard to lose money on a stock as long as
>you hold it long enough to sell for a profit
>Is this generally true?
I certainly fucking hope so.

no, it's super easy to lose all your money if you buy dumb stocks

"Prices go up when there are more buyers than sellers"

But every trade requires both a buyer and a seller, so wot da fuk?

Qualitative b8. Would fuck in asshole/10

No I'm serious. I understand I'm being a twat missing something, but I don't know what that is

You never technically lose money that you haven't withdrawn from a stock yet. So if I put $10,000 in Transalta Renewables and the company tanks, my $10,000 in shares might now only be worth $2,000. If the value stays at $2,000 for a long time, I'm pretty much fucked, especially if I die before it hits $10,000+ again.

For young people, investing's pretty easy, but as you get older, you start to run out of time.

That said, dividends are a good way to gain steady income from your stock investments. Even if a company's stock price (what buyers and sellers think it's worth) goes to shit, a company can still produce decent dividends, and usually, an investment into about 100 stocks of a company can get you about $120 in dividends yearly (of course it always varies though depending on the type of stock and the company).

That said, never just buy because the dividend looks good.

If there's a gap between asking and bidding, then buyers and sellers are left hanging. A buyer and a seller can pair off and commit themselves to a trade, but only if their prices reach an equilibrium.

Ex. If I want to sell a share at $20 but all the bidders for my share--let's say 5 people--all want it for $19, then no trade is going to go through (particularly when I make a limit order); if I lower my selling price to $19, the deal goes through, but only with one buyer. Alternatively, one of those 5 buyers might break and say "fuck it, I'll give you $20 for the share. Now, there are still 4 buyers left, and in a market with multiple buyers and sellers, if other sellers had wanted to give buyers $21, their ask price becomes the new lowest ask price. That shows up on brokerages' trading platforms, and buyers realize that the stock value is going up. At the same time, they realize that more is being paid for that share, so they realize they'll have to start putting out more too if they want to buy any of those shares.)

Now that I think about it, I have a question too. Is there any one location where I can see the meaning behind a ticker symbol?

For example, I know PR# in a ticker means that the stock is preferred, but what are the voting/shareholder differences between, say, a PR.A. stock and a PR.B. stock?

investopedia.com/terms/o/order-book.asm

Do companies necessarily have to be profitable to be considered successful?

Aren't the returns on dividends generally shit though

Cheers

Yeah, but buying orders and selling orders are placed separately. Think of it this way: We're talking about a limited good. If 1 share is offered (sold "at-best") and 10 people want it, the one with the highest buying offer gets it and the general price is adjusted upwards. 9 people are now still offering to buy, but nobody is selling for now.

You are right in so far, as you need *some* kind of order matching and transactions to set a price. Hence most bigger corporations employ so called market makers, ensuring constant liquidity in their asset.

They are called non-profits

They usually rely on donors or grants

A beach cleanup that gets money from the state is an example

I've seen some people on here bragging about getting stuff off ebay for free. I understand that most disputes end in favor of the customer. But, is there any way to get stuff from ebay without the initial paypal junk? No kneepads please.

>generally shit
I wouldn't call it that. There's a lot of variety, but in general I'd expect the dividend yield to be around 3-5%.

I'm speaking in terms of running a business.

Like if a company makes $100m a year and their expenses are $100m I would consider that a success. Sure it means wages can't be raised and the business can't expand, gain more assets but the executives still get their high as fuck salaries and shareholders are still happy, right?

Depends on the situation.
You start a company in the negative all the time, and after an suitable amount of time you should be making a profit.
Also, many companies do have years they are down significantly, but are still successful.
Nintendo for example posted a quarterly loss, but you would be stupid to think they aren't successful

It's successful if you think about it in terms of going under. Nobody wants to lose money so avoiding that is usually a good thing

However, with no growth the shareholders will most likely not be happy

I kind of want to dip my toes into the stock market. Could I just get away with investing $50 or so or would that just be a waste of time?

It depends on who you are and what you judge the company by.

Usually we're talking from the perspective of an inverstor and investors mostly care about their return on investment. So yes, through this lense a company has to be profitable to be considered successful.

If you are the sole owner, you might re-invest all of your profit and just build up the company without taking out money. Through this lense growth is the metric of success.

If you are a city or an employee you might consider a company successful if they provide secure long-term jobs.

If you are a customer or a member of society in general you'll probably think a company is successful if they provide a good affordable product and maybe they don't wreck the enviroment.

Traditionally profit was everything (shareholder perspective), but in the last decade this has mostly been replaced by a much broader approach at evaluating the performance of a company (stakeholder perspective).

Not bad, you get a return of their profits right? Or just their returns?

One of my colleagues got kind of promoted and is moving his office (I was promoted to his position). What would be an appropriate present to get him for the new office/promotion?

Beers for your PROMOTIONS!

I'm not quite sure what you're asking...

A part of the company's profits is allocated to be divided among the shareholders as dividends. The dividend yield is dividend per share price.

But it's not like you couldn't look any of this up on wikipedia...

Supply and demand, what the fuck are you even doing on this board?

Well if you are talking making cents a day if you invest the way rich people invest.

Or you can buy a few safe shares and make 5 dollars after 6 months to a year.

With 50 your best bet is to buy a meme stock and hope to make 100.

Why is it considered stupid to trade stocks in low volume? Especially with robinhood now, it's not too bad of an idea right? Why is it a bad idea to only trade with say 200 if you can afford it

It's stupid to trade low volume stocks, not to trade in low volume.

With brokers and banks you traditionally get minimum fees. eg An order would cost you 0.2%, but a minimum of $10. So if you invest $100 you'd pay 10% fee on that position. You'd have to invest a minimum of $5.000 to get it down to 0.2%.

Obviously this severely impacts rentability and encourages larger orders. If this is not a concern the way you're investing, then you can place smaller orders.

a cactus.