101-01 What Type Of Investor Are You?

What type of investor are you?

Before you start buying and selling stocks, looking at who you are and what you want to achieve is important. To begin with, you need to understand some basic terms.

The term investor has many different meanings. The Collins English dictionary defines it as “an investor is a person or organization that buys stocks or shares, or pays money into a bank to receive a profit.”

But this is too generic to be used clearly for us to reference.

In finance, investments, and speculation, how you seek to gain your profit defines what you are.

Course 101: Introduction to Investing
What Type Of Investor Are You?

PODCAST – What Type of Investor are you?

What Type of Investor are you, and why does it matter? Do you speculate, Day Trade, or do you really invest? These all have an impact on your effort vs. reward.

  • Published: Sun, 26 Nov 2017 23:00:00 GMT
  • Duration: 00:07:30

The Speculator

A speculator seeks to exploit short-term trends, loopholes, momentum, or news to profit from money invested.

For example, suppose you see double or triple the usual daily volume on a stock. In that case, you might want to trade into that stock to get a quick gain without an in-depth understanding of the company, industry, or management team. You are essentially speculating that this event will make the stock rise.

Alternatively, someone who enters into an options contract shorting a stock to make a profit also speculates that the stock price will drop during a given timeframe. This certainly is not investing. None of the cash invested in the options contract will be seen by the company; therefore, you are not investing in that company.

George Soros could be considered one of the ultimate speculators and one of the most successful. Soros, known as the “man who broke the Bank of England,” took out a $10 Billion short position betting that Pound Sterling would fall. Although the Bank of England did everything it could to prop up the currency, it failed, and Soros bagged a $2 billion profit from the bet. Soros was betting on a future event happening. Was this risky? George Soros does not take undue risks; his knowledge of global finance and capital markets enabled him to take a calculated risk, which paid off handsomely. What he did is classic speculation.

What he did is classic speculation. Those who speculate in stocks usually use charts and news events to trade.

The Investor

An investor is usually someone whose money is used to capitalize a company; the money is then invested accordingly by the company to achieve better business results. An investor will seek a reward for his belief in an investment and seek a profit thereof.

An investor will have evaluated the worth of an investment and seek a steady return from it. Someone who buys their own house is a property investor. An investor will often seek to minimize risk and maximize reward.

A smart investor will look to buy an investment at a time when it will be a great value, and this value will help to minimize downside risks. An investor looks at the business fundamentals of a deal and weighs facts, not emotion, to enable a thorough judgment. This is known as value investing.

Buying bonds with fixed rates of returns is an investment for someone looking to improve upon the rate of return they get from their bank’s savings account interest but also unwilling to take the perceived risks of purchasing stocks.

The Trader

A trader buys and sells a product to make a profit. However, someone who is an investor could trade stocks, and people who speculate usually trade contracts and stocks or use other more exotic tools. A day trader actively trades on an extremely short-term basis to make quick, normally small gains. This type of trading can be very risky.

The Liberated Stock Trader

The Liberated Stock Trader will seek to base stock purchases on solid facts that make business sense in the cold light of day. It is a combination of selecting fundamentally winning companies with great futures and using data to decide if the time is right to buy this stock. Being a Liberated Stock Trader, you will invest in solid companies and speculate on the exact timing to buy this great company.

What factors can impact your investment decisions?

Different elements can impact your investment decisions while investing. A Liberated Stock Trader should understand but not be ruled by:

  • Current Events: current events may be important if they lead to big events (for example, the collapse of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae), but applying the Pareto rule of 80/20 would suggest that 80% of current events are not relevant to you, making money on a stock and 20% of current events cause 80% of a bigger movement in stocks.
  • News: news is important, but it does not mean you will make a profit unless it is extremely macroeconomic, “the government of Iceland just went bankrupt,” or microeconomic, “General Motors has gone Chapter 11,” and you own the stock.
  • Rumors: the Wall Street rumor mill, based primarily on emotion and short-term news, may get you too emotional and lead to erratic investment decisions.
  • The latest hot stock tips are usually provided by people with hidden interests or less knowledge about investment than yourself.
  • Hot stocks newsletters: playing on your ignorance and lack of understanding of what constitutes a good investment and making you pay for the privilege.
  • “Pay for” stock trading systems: systems designed to make trading decisions and even trade for you.

What type of investor are you?

Additional Reading.

Swing Trading vs. Day Trading: Tools & Strategy Differences

11 COMMENTS

  7. I am a trader/investor. I disagree that buying a house is an investment. It DEPENDS!! I just sold my house in Mexico at a loss after owning it for 8 years. However, I was fortunate enough to ride the real estate bubble in BC, Canada, right after 9/11/2001 where I bought low and sold high in 2007.

    I don’t believe in hot tips nor newsletters from yet another Guru. I was reading that market makers buy on rumor and sell on news. By the time a rumor becomes News, market makers are already selling their holdings to the amateurs.

    I am realistic to know that I will have losses. My objective, after acquiring the knowledge and required mindset, is to have my losses significantly less than my gains.

  8. I believe that I would fall into the category of possible investor. The reason for my description is that I am only now in my later years considering trying the market to raise more money for a project I am considering.

Comments are closed.