The Truth Behind Stock Market Myths
I’ve been fascinated with the stock market from as young as I can remember. Every bit of knowledge, know-how and strategy about investing, financial literacy and the stock market I soaked up like a sponge.
My love of it took me to college and grad school, then to my dream job working with high net worth individuals and I loved it. But I started to question why I could only work with people who were already rich.
I wanted to help the people who wanted to better their life, fund their dreams, pay off debt and didn’t know where to start.
So, I started Finances Demystified to do just that. Ever since then I’ve been teaching anyone and everyone with a desire to better their financial future knock those goals out of the park.
After several years spent teaching thousands and thousands of students about the stock market, investing and actionable ways they can use it to better their lives, I’ve noticed a lot of myths coming up over and over.
Read on for the most common stock market myths I’ve heard and the real truth behind them!
Investing is just gambling.
FALSE!
First of all I would NEVER build my family’s financial plan on something as risky as gambling. Investing and the stock market often get looped in with this Las Vegas past time, but that’s just simply not accurate.
Gambling is based purely on luck. Sure, some people take the time to calculate their sports bets, but at the end of the day it’s still luck. Also, gambling doesn’t serve a greater purpose or provide the economy much other than local jobs.
Investing on the other hand is not guaranteed, but it’s not based on luck. Do people get lucky? Of course.
Is luck the strategy of savvy investors? Absolutely not.
If you download an investing app and blindly throw money in without an understanding of what you are doing, then yes, it’s a little more like gambling.
Take a class (like my FREE investing master class 😉) and investing is even less like gambling when you are armed with know-how!
You need to be rich.
FALSE!
Whether you have $1, $1,000 or $100,000 to invest the amount does not matter! Here’s what matters:
💥 Just start – somewhere, anywhere, any amount
💥 Have a plan! Every dollar goes further when it has a purpose from planning what stocks will pay dividends to which ones you want to hold long-term, a plan will get you anywhere.
💥 Always be learning, reading, growing…do that and stock market success will snowball more and more.
If a stock is in the news, you should buy it.
FALSE!
This myth made a big splash not too long ago with the famous Game Stop fiasco, but the truth is, just because something is hot or newsworthy does not mean you should buy it.
There are SOOOOO many cases where this strategy is just plain bad. For one, the increased visibility from being in the news can wind up inflating prices and those people with bad cases of FOMO buy anyway, even when the price reaches a level that feels too high.
Instead, be strategic about what news items you allow to affect your decisions. If it’s skyrocketing prices on a stock, the odds are you missed the boat. The investors who had the insight to anticipate the rise before it happened and everyone knew about it – those are the big winners.
Not the people who followed suit.
You should trust someone more advanced with your money (like a dude on Wall Street)
FALSE.
And I only need to drop one name to prove it.
Bernie Madoff.
He was a trusted investor. One time chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange.
But the people who trusted him lost everything.
That’s not to say advisors and brokers are all stealing – most of them are not. However, YOU should at least have an understanding of where your money is going and what your returns are.
You can invest for yourself and rock it. You can call in help (I’m an advisor for some of my clients and students!) and also rock it.
The point is, don’t blindly hand your money over to someone. Know who they are, but most importantly, make sure they are transparent with you about where your money is going.
Everyone should have a general understanding of investing either way.
If you want to learn more about the stock market and how you can learn to dominate it, check out my free investing masterclass! Within one hour, you’ll learn my top strategies that I use to build wealth for myself and my family and how you can get started doing the same!
Sign up for the free masterclass today!