Just how does the Stock Market Work?

By Barry W. Kaller

Try turning on the news or opening up a newspaper. You’ll probably read or hear something about the stock market. I’m sure you’ve heard about stocks making a lot of people money and about people going broke buying stocks, but just how does the stock market work?

Don’t worry, the stock market isn’t that hard to understand. First let’s discuss a market. A market is where goods and/or services are bought and sold. Think of a supermarket. At the local supermarket, food and other goods are bought and sold.

Stocks are bought and sold on the stock market. Stock is basically ownership in a corporation. When you own stock you have equity in that corporation. In other words, you own part of that corporation.

A stock exchange is where stocks are bought and sold. You may have heard of the New York Stock Exchange. This is a very common exchange, but there are other exchanges all over the world where corporations sell their stock.

How do you make money from buying stocks? It is very simple. It’s just like buying and selling other goods and services. You buy the stock for one price and then sometime in the future you sell it for a higher price to make a profit.

It’s just like buying and selling anything else. Take ebay for example. You might find at a yard sale a dvd that is very cheap, maybe $4. You go to ebay and you sell it for $7 after fees. That is a gain of $3, your profit.

How do you buy and sell the stock? This is where the exchange comes into play. You don’t have to go around and find someone to buy from or sell to. You set up a brokerage account and a broker buys or sells the stock for you with your money when ask them.

This is basically how the stock market works. It’s not too complicated. Just make sure you buy low and sell high. This is how you make profit. Do this at least most of the time and you will consistently come out ahead. - 23687

About the Author:

Want to know how the stock market works to make money? Learn more about the stock market and learn how to buy stocks easily to start making your money grow.

Just how does the Stock Market Work?

By Barry W. Kaller

Try turning on the news or opening up a newspaper. You’ll probably read or hear something about the stock market. I’m sure you’ve heard about stocks making a lot of people money and about people going broke buying stocks, but just how does the stock market work?

Don’t worry, the stock market isn’t that hard to understand. First let’s discuss a market. A market is where goods and/or services are bought and sold. Think of a supermarket. At the local supermarket, food and other goods are bought and sold.

Stocks are bought and sold on the stock market. Stock is basically ownership in a corporation. When you own stock you have equity in that corporation. In other words, you own part of that corporation.

A stock exchange is where stocks are bought and sold. You may have heard of the New York Stock Exchange. This is a very common exchange, but there are other exchanges all over the world where corporations sell their stock.

How do you make money from buying stocks? It is very simple. It’s just like buying and selling other goods and services. You buy the stock for one price and then sometime in the future you sell it for a higher price to make a profit.

It’s just like buying and selling anything else. Take ebay for example. You might find at a yard sale a dvd that is very cheap, maybe $4. You go to ebay and you sell it for $7 after fees. That is a gain of $3, your profit.

How do you buy and sell the stock? This is where the exchange comes into play. You don’t have to go around and find someone to buy from or sell to. You set up a brokerage account and a broker buys or sells the stock for you with your money when ask them.

This is basically how the stock market works. It’s not too complicated. Just make sure you buy low and sell high. This is how you make profit. Do this at least most of the time and you will consistently come out ahead. - 23687

About the Author:

Want to know how the stock market works to make money? Learn more about the stock market and learn how to buy stocks easily to start making your money grow.

A Backwards Blog Post

Ever write your blog posts backwards? Well this is one of those. I liked the photo so much I had to come up with a way to work it into a post, so here goes. Something about simul justus et peccator perhaps? No, something I don't need to look up to make sure I spelled it correctly. Romans 7 maybe? Nah, I'll leave that one to the pericopes. Ah, I've got it:

Once in a while if I'm hanging out with the kids and we see or read about someone who's involved in some minor catastrophe, I'll jokingly say that the guardian angel of the person involved must have been out having a smoke. Which is exactly what the photo depicts, a guardian angel whose person was involved in a catastrophe of some sort because the angel was smoking on the job instead of paying attention. I’m not going to judge though - although she looks a little young to be a guardian angel. (You were right Sandra. I guess tatoos are O.K.)

So what's the moral of the story?: Guardian angels should never smoke while on the job.

Alternate moral of the story: Blog writers should never write blog posts backwards.

Which moral do you like best? (This is an inclusive, participative, artsy, blog post, sorta like an Emerging Church blog post would be, hence, we'll use a communal dialectic to create a suitable interpretation - that's right, thesis, antithesis, synthesis.)

Have a great weekend.

photo credit: TreMichLan

How to Track Your Competitor's Suppliers

Tap into the right resources and the world can become your oyster. We wrote about one way to track your competitor’s suppliers a while back here (excerpt):

Another excellent way to tap new geographical markets, to minimize your expenditure of time, money, and energy, and to help focus your overseas sales and marketing efforts is to use the Port Import/Export Reporting Service (PIERS). PIERS (www.piers.com) is the only information service that provides names of U.S. consignees or shippers as well as overseas suppliers, along with detailed descriptions of import or export shipments for the commodity of your choice. This information is taken from ships’ manifests by a nationwide corps of reporters and is loaded weekly into a computer database.

I once used PIERS on behalf of an American window blind manufacturer to find customers who were importing window shades into Capetown, South Africa. My client wanted to effectively compete with an industry giant already exporting to Capetown. After securing a list from PIERS that showed who was buying the competitor’s goods there, we created a direct mail package specifically for those customers. Using the PIERS list gave us the competitive advantage we needed to show the South African prospects the superiority of my client’s product and win them over as customers.

This week we stumbled upon a new resource that appears to be similar to PIERS: Import Genius — a search engine for U.S. customs data. We have no experience with it so we leave it up to you to explore.

Another resource is The Journal of Commerce which has been around forever. They have lots of useful global transportation (commerce) information too.

We suggest you check out all of the above, compare capabilities and let us know what you think.

And if you know of other best-kept secrets, please share (comment). Or maybe you prefer to keep the secret to yourself?