How to Invest in Stocks, Mutual Funds & ETFs for Beginners

Explore stock market fluctuations by defining bull markets, bear markets, and corrections, including 20% rallies, 20% declines, and 10% corrections, with buy opportunities in context.

Assess your situation and research before investing. Ask what a company does, how it earns money, and how profits are used, then weigh diversification, risk tolerance, and analyst views.

Explore how to research a stock using charts, historical data, price and dividend information, and news, while evaluating analyst opinions and avoiding hot tips to become a better investor.

Explore diversification as a risk management strategy through Donna's portfolio, spreading a starting $750 and monthly $100 contributions across several stocks to avoid concentrated risk.

Learn risk tolerance through a real Shopify story: invest a small portion in confident stocks or funds, then decide whether to hold or sell after a large gain.

Learn how dividends work, including quarterly payments and key dates—dividend declaration, ex-dividend, and payment dates—to time purchases and capture returns.

Compare lump sum investing with dollar cost averaging for windfalls and regular contributions. Investing equal dollar amounts over time helps manage market fluctuations and reduces emotional decision-making.

Understand candlestick charts showing opening and closing prices, green candles, red candles, with shadows for highs and lows, and learn about dividend payments, price support and resistance.

Learn to use market and limit orders, trailing stop orders, and understand tax implications, with Coca-Cola example illustrating order setup, execution, and market hours.

Use trailing stop orders to automatically sell shares when prices pull back, locking in gains as stock trails, demonstrated by Francine, a 10% trail on 10 shares bought at $50.

I evaluated my Shopify position, sold four shares at $718 to recover my original investment after the shares approached ten times my cost, and kept 16 for the long term.

Sell strategically by understanding capital gains, short term versus long term, when selling triggers taxes to report to the IRS, and why tax savings should not drive market timing.

Learn how mutual funds and ETFs let you diversify your portfolio and access a range of investments, either by choosing individual funds or by owning shares of a diversified fund.

Explore what a fund is, how mutual funds and ETFs are managed by fund managers within fund families, and how to invest through brokers or directly with Schwab.

Compare mutual funds and exchange traded funds, including end-of-day pricing, minimum investments, and intraday trading with limit orders.

Finish the course by completing a personal assignment that helps organize and share your investing goals and style, then post to the Financial Fundamentals Online Forum for feedback.

Explore how the Fearless Girl near Wall Street links investing in gender-diverse leadership to an index fund with a Nasdaq ticker, 'Know the power of women in leadership.'

The charging bull, sculpted after the 1987 crash and installed in 1989, remains a stock market icon. Fearless Girl moved near the bull in 2018, leaving a plaque with footprints.