Matthew Gates http://notetoservices.com 4m 903 #tech30
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
The Tech30 Investment
There have been the lucky few, the gamblers, the brave, or just those with some extra money and wanting to do something great with it. There are also many people who study and invest in the stock market. There are companies dedicated to helping potential investors invest their money in places where they believe would be a best fit. Why would someone want to invest money? Money makes money.
There are plenty of ways to make money including working for a paycheck, playing the lottery in hopes that you win (though the odds are pretty much against you), inheritance, fame, and other means. While the most direct way is getting paid for your labor, there is another way that requires money and time, and that is through investments.
Investments are basically like buying a piece of a company that you feel will do well and after several years, the company gives you a small to large return on your money, depending on how much you invested, and how many years you owned the piece of company. Your money, however, is never guaranteed, and there is always a chance that a company may go bankrupt, or is a fraud, and you risk losing all your money. If a company does well, however, you have a chance to get very rich.
There are many books, workshops, training sessions, talks, live chats, quotes, and websites from many rich investors who are willing to share their secrets and let you in on what they did, usually for a fee. Following their methods may help, while sometimes it was just a one-time thing and it worked for them.
Whether you are in your early twenties, your mid-thirties, or your late 40s, it is never too late to own stocks, mutual funds, bonds, etc. and increase your money. The sooner you can invest, the greater chance your money has to mature, and the more money you will make. As I said earlier, some young people invest early and invest smart, making millions of dollars in their first years of investments, because of the profitability some companies. However, many other people are hoping to invest and save up enough for retirement, usually in 401k or IRA accounts.
You can study the stock market everyday, hoping one day you will finally work up the courage to invest your extra five hundred or one-thousand dollars into the stock market, but really, there is no day like today. The less a stock costs, the better, but you can get away with owning a few shares of a company and making some money off of it. You would probably not want to buy one stock of a company and hope to make money off of that because it’s just not logical, but buying enough shares to be worth something is the better choice.
While I am not stating what stocks you should invest in, there is definitely a field that is not going anywhere, unless something dire happens to the human race, and that field is technology. CNN Money offers a wonderful insight into the Tech 30.
These are the top 30 technology companies you can invest in. There are plenty of other great technology companies not listed in the Tech 30 that you should research on your own and consider investing in as well. If you can choose 5 to invest and leave your money there for the next twenty to thirty years, you may find yourself retiring comfortably, rather than worry about what is going to happen.
These Tech 30 are:
- Activision Blizzard Inc (ATVI)
- Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA)
- Amazon (AMZN)
- Apple (AAPL)
- ARM Holdings PLC (ARMH)
- AT&T
- Baidu (BIDU)
- Blackberry (BBRY)
- Cisco (CSCO)
- Electronic Arts Inc (EA)
- Facebook (FB)
- Google (GOOGL)
- GoPro Inc (GPRO)
- Hewlett-Packard (HPQ)
- IBM (IBM)
- Intel (INTC)
- LinkedIn (LNKD)
- Microsoft (MSFT)
- Netflix (NFLX)
- NVIDIA Corp (NVDA)
- Oracle (ORCL)
- Palo Alto Networks Inc (PANW)
- PayPal Holdings INc (PYPL)
- Priceline (PCLN)
- Qualcomm (QCOM)
- Salesforce.com (CRM)
- SAP SE (SAP)
- Twitter (TWTR)
- Verizon (VZ)
- Yahoo! (YHOO)
The best advice any investor will ever give you: Never put all your eggs in one basket. Invest in more than just technology. Invest into a little bit of everything!
Of course, nothing is guaranteed, and one day, you may lose almost all your money, while another day, you may gain all of it and then some back. It is still a nice gesture on the part of CNN Money to offer this opportunity, where you have invested hypothetically in the company, and you can see how you would actually do. For example, CNN Money invested $1000 into the Tech 30 at the beginning of 2014. You can see how much that $1000 investment made from YTD (Year-To-Date).
Now imagine if you had taken the leap of faith and invested your money into these stocks. How much richer or closer to retirement would you be? Instead of spending every paycheck on nonsense or trying to figure out what to do with the little extra money you have leftover, instead of letting it sit in your bank account, where it makes a sad excuse of 0.01% or .02% interest or yield, which results to almost nothing each year, while the bank makes plenty of money making their own investments borrowing your money, it would serve you better to put your money where it will make you money.
Matthew Gates is a freelance web designer and currently runs Confessions of the Professions.
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