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How to Use Smartstocks to Evaluate Stocks
If you're an investor, you always want to beat the market. For some, this can mean late nights and anxiety. This is not a healthy way of life, so it's time to find a better way to evaluate the market conditions. Smartstocks is a free website that allows you to invest (with $1,000,000 virtual dollars) in stocks on the major exchanges. You can use this to evaluate stocks you are considering for your real portfolio, with zero risk before trying out your investment strategies for real.
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EditSteps
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1Visit Smartstocks. The URL is located at: http://www.smartstocks.com Once there, click on "Sign up now!". You will be asked for your first name, last name, primary e-mail address, password, zip code and country.Ad
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2Log in (if you haven't already). You will see the buttons or links on the left hand-side. These help to navigate you to help information, groups management, and of course, your portfolio.
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3Overview the Sample Portfolios. On the left hand side there are Sample Portfolios. Most of these aren't good so you shouldn't copy them directly. However, you can use some of their ideas to build your own.
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4Invest. When you have found stock picks you want to try out, go to your portfolio and enter the ticker symbol, number of shares, and click the radio button "Buy". To sell shares, do the same, by clicking the radio button "Sell". To finish the transaction, click "Complete Transaction".
- You can look up ticker symbols below the transaction box.
- At the top of the website, you can get a quick quote on any stock.
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5Wait for trades on the stock market to occur. Your virtual trades have no impact on the actual stock market, so if you're a high net worth investor, you might need to do a bit more analysis. Your portfolio is set up to show all your stocks' tickers, quantity (number of shares owned), current price (last trade), previous close (yesterday's closing price), change (how much the price has changed since the last close), change % (% increase since the last close), purchase price (price you bought in at), gain (amount earned from the investment), gain % (% increase in your stock's value since you bought it), current value (the sum of what all your shares are worth if you sold them right now). At the bottom of your portfolio you will find your gain since the beginning of the month, your percentage gain since the beginning of the month, and the overall value of your portfolio (starts the game with $1,000,000).
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6Evaluate your trades. Primarily look at your gain. If it is positive, you have gained from your investment (and will be shown green). If it is negative, you have lost in your investment (and will be shown red). Cash in the portfolio is used to buy shares of stock. If you don't have enough to buy shares of another stock, you will need to sell shares in a stock to earn cash. Now you can make decisions on what to put in your real portfolio based on testing in your virtual portfolio.Ad
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EditTips
- Be sure to check out the Market News and get quotes for your stocks.
- Smartstocks' group features can be really helpful. If you're a leader of a group or class, it may be helpful to have your members register an account and join it. With groups, you can see each other's portfolio growth (since account creation and current month). The group master can also see individual portfolios and trades.
- Your Trading History (on the left-hand side navigation pane) will show you trades you have made on your portfolio. You can see the ticker symbol, number of shares, and the action (buying or selling).
- Unfortunately, there are no direct links to specific pages in Smartstocks, everything is located in frame.html.
- Don't fret over a bad day in the market and start selling. Wait a day or two to see if it goes back up before you sell.
- Smartstocks is better suited for day traders and speculators than long-term investors.
- As a day trader you will have to face the constant battle between bears and bulls. Keep your head high, however, and look toward stocks that may become bullish.
EditWarnings
- Don't trust anyone but yourself to make decisions regarding your real portfolio. Bad decisions could cost you in a volatile stock market. Make informed decisions.
- Smartstocks does not take into account commission fees for brokers and any other associated fees with your actual portfolio or account for dividend payments, so keep this in mind.
- Money on Smartstocks is not real. You cannot liquidate your gains to real world cash, so be sure to apply your best actions to your actual portfolio.
EditThings You'll Need
- Internet access
- Smartstocks account
Article Info
Featured Article
Categories: Featured Articles | Financial Stocks
Recent edits by: Chris, Jhnri6, DifuWu
In other languages:
Русский: использовать Smartstocks чтобы оценить акции
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