My Favorite Investment Platform

The stock market actually is my favorite investment platform. However to success in investments requires knowledge about values and stocks in which one is investing as well as the risks that those values carry. Investment opportunities are very broad and the abundant information that exists in the internet may help us get more knowledge about those investment opportunities.

Normally the simple guiding principle to invest in stock market is very simple which is buying at low price and sell when the price is higher. However, I believed the majority of investor knows when to buy, but having difficulties, when to sell? It just because we start feel greedy, and we normally tend to forget about our investment objectives such as for example to get at least 15% return from every contract purchased from every stock. From structured investment strategy, we tend to move on the speculative mode.

Speculative is whereby, putting money in a place in which opportunities to get a very high financial return through a determined period of time are just minimum. I am in the opinion that investing and speculating are not the same; where, speculating is more related to gambling in which odds are against the individual that decides to invest. In speculative investment perspective, the risk of loosing in future contract investments area extremely high. People just rely on tips that can be obtained from fiends, rumors whereas investing is referring to the situation that people rely to the credible information to execute the investment strategy.

However for my personal investment philosophy, I will try to adapt some processes or tips:

1.   Get additional knowledge and become educated about the investment. Analyse and understand about stocks and the market, take a seminar or class on investing and review online financial sites.

2.   Develop financial goals and objectives and formulate the stock-picking strategy.

3.   Do a research for each individual stock by reading annual reports, quarterly reports and other documents on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. For muslim, they may want to ensure that the stocks compliance with Syariah panel committee.

4.   Invest in what I know. Be considering the stocks of local companies that I am more familiar and in which I have confidence.

5.   Check out the holdings of some successful fund management companies. If they are winning with particular stocks, perhaps I will follow too. For example Employee Provident Fund, Mutual-Fund etc.

6.   Diversify. Avoid putting my money in just one or two stocks or, for that matter, in one or two industries.

7.   Use a discount brokerage to buy stocks.

8.   Buy stocks that I feel comfortable holding for two to four years. Resist the temptation to dump a stock the moment its price drops a few percentage points. Give it a chance to perform.