I’m new to stock markets. Which is the best stock investing course for beginners?

This depends on your financial situation and what amount you’re comfortable with. Generally, we suggest students to start with an amount you “can afford to lose”. We’re not saying that you will lose money—you will make money when you apply the course strategies properly.

But over the years we’ve found that students who go in with all their life savings often put too much pressure on having to “make back my course fees”, having to “grow so-and-so amount by end of the year”, etc. This deeply affects their investor psychology and causes them to make irrational buy/sell decisions that sabotage their profits.

Before you start investing, make sure you have at least 6 months’ worth of living expenses put aside in case of unforeseen circumstances like retrenchment or hospitalisation. Never touch your emergency funds for investing!

As a rule of thumb, we find USD 5,000 – 10,000 to be a good amount to start with. You can gradually increase your portfolio size after you become more familiar with the strategies.

You may also want to consider what kind of returns are meaningful to you. Let’s say your investments bring you 10% gains in a year. If you had started with a USD 5,000 capital, that would mean a USD 500 gain after one year. Find that comfortable amount that motivates you to take action, while not being overtaxing on your finances.

Can I Start Investing If I Have Limited Capital

If you don't have a lot of capital, you can still start investing. You can start small by investing 10% of your salary every month in relatively safer areas like ETFs. This money will eventually compound into a sizeable amount when you put in the discipline to hold for the long term.

Alternatively, some brokers also offer fractional shares investing, so you can own part of an expensive stock such as Amazon (AMZN) even if you can’t afford the full share of ~$2,000.

What kind of returns will I see?

This depends on what kind of portfolio you choose to build (your risk appetite); whether you go for “safer” stocks like ETFs that historically average about 8% a year, or more aggressive growth stocks that come with relatively higher risk.

In Whale Investor™, we cover strategies for all risk profiles. Generally, by applying Whale Investor™ course strategies, students can expect returns of about 10 – 20% per year given a 5-year period.

As investors, we measure returns by percentage (%), not by absolute numbers. This is because how much absolute dollars you make depends on how much capital you put in.

For example, Alex and Betty hold the exact same portfolio of stocks. But Alex starts with USD 10,000 while Betty starts with USD 50,000. At the end of one year, the portfolio has grown 10%.

In absolute figures, Alex would have earned USD 1,000 while Betty earned USD 5,000. Now, does that make Betty a more successful investor? No, because they both grew their investments by 10%.

As investors, we measure returns by year, not months or days. This is because our goal is to grow our capital in the long-term (beating inflation and measly fixed deposit interest rates).

We want to buy fundamentally strong companies and hold them for the long term (5 to 10 years or more), and we don’t think about selling them for quick profits.

In the short-term, even great companies’ stock price may fall temporarily due to bad news, so it is not meaningful to measure profits by months or days.

If you can’t tell whether you’re an investor or trader, read this article.