The last year and a half have shown that the stock market in not a place for the weak at heart. It is important that you never invest money in stocks that you can’t afford to lose. So many people had their life’s savings in stocks and now they are in real trouble. Stocks are risky and any stock you buy can go up or down no matter how much it is recommended. Anyone who tells you that investing in stocks is safe is not telling you the truth. If you want safety, you should be investing in bank CD’s or government bonds but of course right now they are paying next to nothing in interest. You may get a higher return with stocks but the much higher risk comes with it.

The last 10 years or so have seen stocks become much more volatile. One of the reasons for this is the emergence of online stockbrokers and the ability to buy stocks online. Day traders have emerged that are interested in buying and selling stocks quickly rather than invest for the long term. This has made the stock market have bigger swings day to day. It used to be that investors bought stock in a company because they liked its fundamentals for the long haul but now many buy stock with only the short term in mind. It has almost become too easy for anyone to get involved in the stock market and as a result a lot of beginner investors have gotten involved.

If you are new to investing and stocks, you might end up scratching your head trying to learn all the terminology. Anyone who watches any of the business shows on TV will hear a lot of technical terms thrown around which will probably be very confusing. You must realize and accept that you will never be able to learn everything overnight. Your best bet is to get a book on the basics of stock investing and then start to learn the vocabulary and terminology. Know that this will be a long term endeavor but one that will be worth it. If you go about things slowly and keep learning from the ground up, you will soon be in a position where you will understand what is going on in the stock market. You will then start to understand what type of stock investments you are interested in and what types you will want to steer clear from.

The stock market is a place where long term securities are bought and sold. It is a market used to raise long term finances for the businesses and provides the businesses with the necessary liquidity.

There are different participants in a stock exchange and each one of them has their own objectives. They carry their share trading on the basis of their objectives. The different kinds of share trading which are in practice are intraday trading, swing trading, commodity trading etc. Trading can be done both on the equities as well as on commodities. Trading on commodities is known as commodity trading. Commodity trading includes trading of commodities like gold, crude, silver, nickel, lead etc. The Indian commodity market opens at 9:55 in the morning and functions till 11:30 in the night. The commodity trading is largely influenced by the change in price of the commodities in the international commodities market. In India a large number of investors do engage in commodity trading. Most of the large players in commodity trading are traders like jewelers etc. They see commodity trading as a tool to mitigate the risks of their business. In commodity trading the commodities are bought and sold in a lot or individually. The parties involved in commodity trading may sometime go for margin money and if the value of their security falls down then they cannot hold it for a longer period of time as they are in short of funds.

Intraday trading and swing trading are two tools of speculation. Swing trading is a practice where by the instrument is bought or sold at the end of volatility in price. So swing trading makes use of the volatility of the share price for a period of one week. Intraday trading is the most commonly used speculative tool in our stock exchanges. In intraday trading, the securities that are brought on that day are sold before the market closes for that day. So people who indulge in intraday trading are not real investors and they are really interested in making quick profits. Intraday trading can give you quick profits as well as the chances for loss making are many when compared to delivery trading. Most people who indulge in intraday trading end up making losses because they do not know anything about the stock exchanges and listening to others words them start intraday trading expecting quick profits. Most people who go for intraday trading use the margin money system and therefore they cannot hold their shares for a longer time due to the shortage of funds.