Investing in stocks, regardless if it’s Google or a cannabis company is surprisingly easy, and it’s one of the only ways to potentially turn a small amount of money into a large amount of money.

To put the power of investing in perspective, had you opened up a brokerage account and signed up for Stock Advisor in January of this year, assuming you received all of the alerts, an initial $10,000 portfolio would be worth well over $18,740 today!

Why Invest in Stocks?

Investing in stocks is one of the ways the rich keep getting richer (it’s also a lot easier to invest in stocks than you might think. Regardless of the amount of cash you have saved, if you’re not putting your cash to work by investing it, history proves you will miss out over time.

This is the “secret” to building serious wealth. Don’t believe me? Just ask Warren Buffett, a man who has made $89 billion from investing his money over the course of his life. If you have a long-term time horizon, and aren’t worried about short-term price fluctuations, investing enables you to grow your assets…sometimes exponentially. For example, if you buy $10,000 worth of Starbucks stock, and Starbucks moves 30% higher, you’ll make $3,000 by doing nothing.

Step #1: Opening an Account

The first thing you’ll have to do before you can invest in stocks is open an online brokerage account.

All stock and ETF trades start at just $3.95. Plus, every Ally client gets access to robust trading platforms and 24/7 customer service, and Ally never charges any inactivity or maintenance fees.

Step #2: Finding Winning Stocks to Invest In

OptionsBro Stock Advisor helps take the uncertainty out of investing. We have a proven track-record of picking winning stocks every week. Our alerts are sent out every Wednesday to our subscribers indicating which stocks are likely to go up in value.

Although you certainly don’t have to sign up for OptionsBro Stock Advisor to make money from buying stocks, investing without signing up is like throwing darts with your eyes closes and hoping to hit a bullseye.

Nonetheless, once your Ally Invest account is opened and funded, and you’re ready to trade, consider taking a look at some of these popular stocks in 2019.

Step #3: Making the Trades

Once you’ve entered the ticker symbol name into Ally’s platform (this information is supplied in the weekly Stock Advisor emails), real-time prices and buttons to buy and sell the stock will appear.

The next decision you need to make is how many shares you want to purchase. This will be your fractional ownership in the company. The exact number of shares to purchase is entirely up to you. You can buy 1 share or 1,000,000 shares. You’re only limited by the funds you have available. Ally’s system, thankfully, won’t let you accidentally purchase too many shares relative to your account value. As a general rule of thumb, most investors never put more than 10% of their available funds into a single stock. So if you have $1,000 and a stock is $50 per share, you might want to only buy a few shares, at least until you become comfortable with investing.

When it comes to placing orders, experts prefer to use “limit” orders, because you get to decide what price your trade will execute at. A “market” order will execute your order at the current market price. This is sort of like buying a house without looking at the offering price; for stocks, market orders are only useful if you don’t care about the short-term price movements and just want to own the stock. After submitting your “limit” order (the recommended limit order price for each stock is also specified in Stock Advisor alerts), you’ll receive a confirmation of your investment from and you’ll officially be an investor!

If you want to sell your investment and close out your position, all you have to do is click on your position in your Ally Invest account and click “sell”. Of course, if you need help with anything in this process, Ally Invest customer service is ready to help you 24/7 over the phone or live chat.

About Opening a Brokerage Account

Final Thoughts

In the world of finance, investing is always considered somewhat risky, but it’s also highly lucrative. As the old saying goes, “fortunes favor the bold.”

At the end of the day, buying stocks and investing is planning for your financial future. Regardless of the amount of cash you have in your bank account, if it’s just sitting there, it’s not doing anything for you. Financially savvy people put their money to work by investing it in stocks.

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Updated: April 1, 2019