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Originally Posted by Fire in the disco
Thanks, perhaps my wording was a little casual. I’ve been investing for well over a decade in rrsps/mutual funds etc.
I’m looking to start buying stocks on my own and looking to see what platform people that trade here recommend to use.
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If the keyword is casual, then I'd suggest the following (keep in mind there's many different opinions out there). I'd also suggest keeping it "fun" rather than get too serious and just spending a lot of time worrying about the portfolio.
IMO, first thing to do is pick up the mentality (to keep it fun) that what you put into your stocks is something you may completely lose. No matter what people say, it's a form of gambling with varying odds. People will argue this point a lot, but I think it's important. Many stocks out there are "safe". Like a bank with a steady revenue from interests and charges. But likely, as your confidence goes up, you will jump into things that have a possibility of losing major numbers (25%+). If you consider that you may lose it all, you may walk in with stronger nuts in terms of cutting your losses and moving your residual amounts into stocks with better potential/fit in your portfolio.
- Trade with the bank you bank at (ie: TD, BMO, RY etc.). It's easy to set up, easy to transfer funds, faster to transfer funds and the price per trade is reasonable.
- Consider purchasing minimum batches of stocks between $800-1500 if you want to play and diversify. This means that the $10+$10 transaction fee is no worse than 2.5% of the transaction (usually less).
- Start off with Canadian banks as a training wheel. IMO it's the easiest stocks to learn and understand for those with low risk appetite and no exposure to stocks prior (I've had people tell me this is dumb though, but I feel most of them are more gamblers than true investors).
But consider this: It's a bank, it gives a dividend so holding it while its down still has benefits. Most of them historically will gain long term (minus one offs like 2008 crisis). A bank is a relatively easy business to understand (income from interest and fees, expenses from people and locations). Quarterly reports are easier to understand, major swings from performance and politics are easy to understand. A bank is boring and consistent, you rarely have to keep tabs on it.
- Once you have your base stocks, then add more "fun" stocks to play with. With such a combination, you don't have to monitor 100% of the stocks you own at any given time. Just the 20-30% that are relevant when you are checking up on them.
For instance, I have a TFSA which for every $10K is something like:
- 25% boring dividend stocks (Banks)
- 60% recognizable names with moderate risk (ie: Grocery, ETFs, infrastructure, transportation, mining, tech, telecom etc.)
- 15% of the forefront stocks or stocks no one recognizes (Weed, penny stocks, tech etc.)
At any given time, I probably only have to pay attention to about 30% of my stocks. The banks are just either up or down, the the rest are either having interesting news or just cooling off. Personally, I log into my portfolio around every 2-3 months. It's more fun for me that way. Monitoring my stocks every few days or weeks or more isn't really fun.