terms

Brokerage - a financial company that allows you to buy and sell stocks

Brokerage account - the account you put money into to buy and sell stocks with

Commissions - fees that most brokerages charge you when you buy or sell stocks

Account minimums - a minimum amount of money that you have to put into your account when you open a brokerage account

Market buy/sell - a buy or sell order that executes immediately at whatever the current price is, or whatever is the closest you can get to the current price

Limit buy/sell - a buy or sell order that only executes at a predetermined price or better

Stop loss - an order that becomes a market sell when a stock reaches a predetermined price

Stop limit - an order that becomes a limit order when a stock reaches a certain price, the price at which it becomes a limit and the price of the limit order itself are set separately

Liquidity - a measure of how easily/quickly a stock can be bought or sold without drastically affecting its price

Trading hours - 9:30 AM EST - 4:00 PM EST, Monday to Friday

Pre-market hours - 4:00 AM EST - 9:30 AM EST, Monday to Friday

Post-market hours (after hours) - 4:00 PM EST - 8:00 PM EST, Monday to Friday

Extended-hours trading - trading that happens in premarket or postmarket hours

Margin trading - borrowing money from a brokerage to trade stocks with, requires a margin account

DD - due diligence, doing your own research on a company before you buy its stock (otherwise known as not being a fucking retard)

Fundamental analysis - the practice of evaluating a company's financial health as well as various other factors such as overall economic and market performance to determine the intrinsic value of a stock, an alien concept to cryptofags

Technical analysis - the practice of using the historical trends of a stock's price to speculate on how its price will change in the future

Scalping - a trading strategy based on capitalizing on small changes in share price that occur within minutes and slowly accumulating small gains

Day trading - a trading strategy based on capitalizing on intraday fluctuations in share price

Swing trading - a trading strategy based on capitalizing on short term changes in share price that occur within a period of days or weeks

Position trading - a trading strategy based on capitalizing on long term changes in share price that occur over a period of weeks, months, or years, the closest thing to long term investing that's still considered trading

Long-term investing - the practice of buying shares of safe, proven companies and holding them for years or decades

Growth investing - the practice of investing in a company based on how fast its earnings are growing

Value investing - the practice of investing in a company based on perceived differences in its intrinsic value and its current market price, value investors expect a stock to increase in price over time and seek to buy at a discount

Options - contracts that grant the owner the right to buy or sell a specified amount of stock at a given price within a given period of time, are more complicated than traditional shares and much riskier, can be calls or puts

Calls - options that give the owner the right to buy a stock at a given price within a given period of time, are used to bet that a stock will go up

Puts - options that give the owner the right to sell a stock a given price within a given period of time, are used to bet that a stock will go down

Dividends - money taken from excess profits that companies give investors on a regular, predetermined basis as an incentive to own their stock

Shorting - the practice of borrowing shares of a stock at a given price, selling them immediately, and then buying an equal amount of shares at a lower price, giving them back, and keeping the difference, is used to profit when a stock does down

Mutual fund - a pool of money collected from multiple investors and managed by professionals that is invested in a diverse number of stocks

Market index - a weighted average of the value of several individual stocks in a sector of the stock market

Index fund - a type of mutual fund with a portfolio made to match a given market index

ETF (exchange traded fund) - a type of fund resembling an index fund which can be bought and sold like a typical share of stock

Cryptocurrencies - bullshit internet tokens with no intrinsic value and prices based entirely on arbitrary speculative hype that nobody with any common sense should place large amounts of money into