Investing Prerequisites

As investing is a way to allocate money into assets to generate revenue, you may worry that learning to invest might be difficult. With several different ways to invest, you may need help figuring out where to start. This guide will introduce you to the best methods to learn to invest and what to learn first to make the process easier. That way, you will be successful however you choose to use your new investing skills. 

What is Investing?

Investing is dedicating money to purchasing assets that increase in value over time. The main function of investing is to generate returns from invested assets. Investors can invest in several kinds of investments, including stocks, bonds, funds, trusts, private equity, and real estate. Investing in almost any industry can help build capital for businesses. 

Investing puts money to work. On the surface, investing can appear like saving money; however, saving money sits in an account, gaining little per year, as saving accounts have an average of 0.7% growth per year. Investors can choose to actively invest, which means they manage their portfolio or passively invest, which means they take a less involved approach to investing. They can also choose to invest in high-growth companies with higher Price-earnings (P/E) or invest in companies that have lower P/E but have higher dividend yields. Both approaches can pay large sums; it depends on how much risk they want to include in their investment portfolios. 

Read more about what investing is and why you should learn it.

What Can You Do with Investing?

When you think of investing, the image that comes to mind is Stock Brokers frantically calling in trades as they watch the numbers scroll by on the screen. Stock Brokers are a large part of the investing world. They deal with the stock market every single day. They help keep the economy moving. However, there is more to investing than just stock brokers. 

With the internet, anyone can invest in the market using mobile apps. You can also invest to save for retirement or various other reasons. When starting with investing, you want to start an investment portfolio. Often, these portfolios include bonds, stocks, mutual funds, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), real estate, and cash equivalents. However, some people choose to invest their money in more unusual ways. One of the key parts of investing is choosing assets that will increase in value over time. Investments can be physical assets as well. One good way to invest is to buy a vacation or rental property that you can rent out. This option allows the money you used to purchase the property to bring more money back to you. Others invest in other items like cars, handbags, or even watches. Each of these items needs a lot of research to ensure they are worth purchasing and if they will bring in more money if sold later. 

Is Investing Easy to Learn?

Taking the time to familiarize yourself with your finances can help you understand finance on a greater scale. The process of investing has multiple moving parts that can change at a moment's notice, making it difficult to keep track of everything when starting. However, several things can be considered and learned before even starting to learn investing to make it easier. 

However, investing is a high-stress career and can cause burnout quickly if one does not take the right precautions. The high stress and burnout make investing more difficult to learn. To truly understand how to be good at investing, you must devote a lot of time to playing with the market and your assets. Taking a guided course can help make the learning process easier; however, there will be some lessons a classroom cannot teach you. 

Those with previous experience in the financial sector will easily grasp the key investing concepts. Those with no previous experience will take a bit longer to learn everything. 

What to Know Before Learning Investing

While learning to invest might be challenging, any beginner should learn a few additional skills to make learning these important financial skills. 

Goal Setting

A large part of investing is achieving financial goals, whether personal or professional. This may seem easy to learn, as almost anyone can set goals. However, this skill is about more than just setting goals; it is about knowing which steps to take to achieve your goals. 

When you set up goals, you can separate them into three different categories, short, medium, and long-term goals. Goals in each of these categories will take different steps to achieve. You will need to know what steps to take and how much risk you want to take to achieve those goals. 

Financial Concepts/ Ratios

Investing involves a lot of financial concepts and ratios. Even if you only want to invest money into an IRA account, you'll still want to understand the concept of interest and know how much it will impact you over time. Regardless of how you want to invest, understanding these concepts can help you decide on a deal and tell if it is a good one. 

You will better understand the various numbers you encounter as you invest. You may consider enrolling in one of Noble Desktop’s finance courses to help you better prepare.

Research

Another large part of investing is researching the markets to know what you should invest in next. With countless amounts of information out there, you will need to know how much information you should be paying attention to. 

Before learning to invest, you can start researching companies you are interested in to familiarize yourself with the information you will come across. 

Key Insights

• Training courses can make investing skills easier to learn.
• Knowing how to set obtainable goals and how to achieve those goals is essential to long-term investing success.
• One should become familiar with different financial concepts once they start investing.
• Investing requires a lot of research, so familiarizing yourself with the information you will encounter can help with investing. 

Learn Investing with Hands-on Training at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop provides an array of Investing and Financial classes that meet various scheduling requirements and learning styles. No matter how you enroll in these courses, students will learn from expert instructors in small classes. Students may attend in-person training at Noble's Manhattan campus or remotely from anywhere. In addition to the courses, all students can retake the course within one year of completing it for no extra charge, giving them more time to hone their skills. 

For those interested in beginning their investment journey, Noble offers a short introduction course, Stock Market Investing, teaching students the fundamentals of the stock market and how to invest. Students will learn what moves the stock market and how investors value stocks. Students will understand P/E ratios and DCF analysis as they dive into different financial statements. While this course does not provide enough information to start your investing career, it does provide vital information that will help you out in your career and get you on the right path. 

Students may consider the Financial Analysts Training Program to jump-start a career in the financial sector or with investing. In the program, students work with financial modeling and valuation. As students learn basic and advanced features of Microsoft Excel, they learn to utilize the program for long-term planning, financial functions, and cash flow projection. Those interested in becoming Financial Analysts may also consider the Python for Finance Bootcamp. This course teaches how to use the Python programming language’s financial libraries to gather and manipulate financial data. Both of these courses can jump-start your career in investing!