if you're a teenager and you're looking to start investing in the stock market this video is for you this is going to be a free step-by-step course teaching you how to get started investing in stocks we'll go through everything you need to know including how you can actually invest if you're under 18. as well as some of the best investments you guys can get into make sure you stick around and take notes because we're going to cover a lot of really important things in this video let's get started so first let's talk about an overview of what we're going to be covering in this video first we'll go through an introduction of what stocks are next we'll talk about the important things you need to know before you start investing number three is I'm going to actually show you how to get started investing in stocks number four is we're going to go through custodial accounts which are required if you're under 18 years old number five is we'll go through examples of different stocks you guys can buy and then six we'll go through my final thoughts about investing if you're young so first up is the introduction to stocks okay so basically let's talk about what stocks are right I like to sort of think of them as a piece that represents ownership of a fraction of the company that is selling the stock so for example if a company has you know a total of 1 000 outstanding share years and you own a hundred shares that means you own 10 of the company in the same example if you were to own only 10 shares that would mean you own one percent of the company's assets so companies basically sell stocks to raise money for their business operations there are a lot of companies out there that are not public they don't have you know stocks that are available on the stock market but the ones that you probably are familiar with those are public and they likely have shares trading in the General stock market so in a nutshell there's basically two ways that you guys can make money by buying and holding stocks the first is through dividend income and the second is through capital appreciation and on the next slides we're actually going to dive deeper into each of these two things so what are dividends basically Dividends are money that a company gives out to stockholders for holding the stock this is typically paid out monthly quarterly semi-annually or annually now the amount of money you're receiving is measured by the dividend yield which is essentially the dividend payment divided by the price so for example if a stock is worth twenty dollars and it pays out an annual dividend of one dollar that means that their dividend yield is going to be five percent you might be wondering why would companies actually want to you know give out dividend payments well it's going to be a percentage of corporate profits two qualified shareholders it's basically there were two shareholders for holding their stock an example of a popular diving stock is going to be Johnson Johnson so right now they have a dividend yield of about 2.74 and basically what that means is that for every share you own of jnj you're getting about four dollars and fifty two cents every single year in div and payments that is based on the current stock price of jnj it means that if you own 2 212 shares of jnj worth about 361 thousand dollars that means that you'd earn about ten thousand dollars in dividend income every single year so yeah as you can see if you have enough stock this can actually eventually turn into a reliable source of income as you build up your portfolio now what's capital appreciation this is basically a rise in a stocks price and to make money there's going to be some type of difference between your purchase price and your selling price of that stock for example if you buy a stock for ten dollars and you sell it at 12 that means you earn two dollars in capital appreciation that two dollars is then going to be taxed as a capital gain the reason why stocks go up or down in price is because of supply and demand if there are more sellers than there are buyers well these stock prices going to go down there are more buyers than sellers that means that the stock price is going to go up usually if there's good news for a company for example if they earn a lot more than expected revenues then that increases the number of people trying to buy the stock which does mean that the price should go up now let's talk about compound interest because this is a universal rule that is extremely important when it comes to investing in stocks compound interest basically means the combined interest of both the initial money put in and the money that you make from it right so it's basically interest on interest we'll pull up a graph right now showing what compound interest looks like you can see that at the start the growth is relatively slow and flat but as the years go on and on the slope of that graph gets higher and higher and soon you're basically growing at an exponential Pace the reason for this exponential pace is because of that interest on the interest there really is a Snowball Effect and this is really why investing for the long term is so important if you guys are young and you're watching this video just know that if you buy stocks right now then historically based on what we've seen in the past it should grow in the long term and if you can hold on for a long time you will be able to take advantage of this compound growth a really easy way to look at this is let's say you invest a hundred dollars today in that first year you get a five percent return on your money which means that that hundred dollars grows into you know 105 now for the second year let's say you also get another five percent growth if you invest 105 this year or you're going to make another five dollars the answer is no because you had that extra five dollars that you made the year before after a second year you're going to be left with 110 and 25 cents I know that's a very small amount over what we had before not the five dollars and 25 cents is barely more than the five dollars made the year before but throughout the years that actually becomes bigger and bigger and that's basically the interest on the interest so the takeaway basically is you want to invest for the long term so that you can see compound interest take place so now let's talk about finding your investing strategy right so there are different investing strategies for different types of goals now I've sort of oversimplified it in the slide but essentially there's two different ways to invest there's the growth slash value investing which basically is when short-term investors want to be active in the market they want to trade you know every day every week every month and there's also dividend slash passive investing this is going to be for long-term investors that want to you know just trade once sort of hold that money forget about it and build generational wealth that way I'm always for Passive investing because I truly think that you know based on the history of the United States and how stocks have moved that's worked out really well for most people it also takes less brain power so that you can focus your time and energy on increase using your income allowing you to invest even more money yeah basically for most of you guys watching this video I assume you don't want to you know spend the majority of your time researching stocks you know like stressing over what trades you're going to make most people actually don't beat the stock market this way they actually lose but I'll be pushing for you guys to invest more passively now let's talk about some of the very important things you should know and I first want to talk about what really matters when it comes to investing what matters is that you invest a small amount into safe stocks consistently so we sort of call this dollar cost averaging and by doing this you're able to take advantage of compound interest and time invested into a stuff if you guys look at the graph on the right you can see it really really matters when you start investing so as you guys are probably young and watching this video you're definitely at a very big Advantage now what does not matter right time the market for the perfect time to buy a stock does not matter you should not try doing that research has shown again and again that it is impossible to time the market even though you may think you are super smart you probably cannot do it because you need to time the bottom of the market and you need to time the top of the market it's very very hard plus a majority of the gains in a market over the long term come on single days and you know guessing those days is just pretty much impossible another thing that does not matter is trying to trade in flip stocks all the time day trading is cool for a lot of people but it's also not cool for more people if you want to pretty much guarantee winning the stock market then I don't suggest doing that okay so now let's talk about custodial accounts which are extremely relevant if you are very young and you're trying to invest if you guys are under 18 and you're watching this video then just know that you cannot actually open up your own stock account by yourself instead you're gonna have to open up a custodial account or rather should I say your parents need to open up a custodial account this is basically going to be a savings account or brokerage account that an adult can actually control for you the minor it works just like any brokerage accounts that someone over the age of 18 can open but there are of course some limitations since it is technically owned by the parents until you turn 18. you can withdraw money as long as it is used for the benefits of you The Miner and then like I mentioned earlier this account is going to be passed into your control when you turn 18 years old so definitely bookmark this part of the video and you can show it to your parents laters now here's some pros and cons for having a custodial account the pros are you'll likely have 24 7 customer support for your account depending on what platform you're using these are also very flexible they're very simple to create they're less expensive than a trust fund to create and maintain earnings are also taxed at the miners tax rate up to a certain point this is generally going to be a lower tax rate since you're likely making less money and it does allow you the miners to fully take advantage of compound interest now of course there are some cons so having a custodial count with money inside of it can reduce your financial aid eligibility or any other government Aid any deposits are irreversible and the account beneficiary cannot be altered and when it comes to custodial accounts there are two different types ugma and utma so ugma stands for uniform gift to miners act and this only applies to financial assets right like stocks bonds and mutual funds utma stands for uniform transfers to minors act and this applies to financial and physical assets that'll include things like stocks bonds mutual funds real estate and jewelry and art I assume most of you guys will be using the ugma accounts because not very many teenagers do have physical assets like real estate and art I want to really briefly touch on the power of compound interest before we continue with this video because it's that important so first we have scenario a and this is basically if you have a custodial Roth IRA that's maxed out into the S P 500 with an average annual return of 10 if it's maxed out since you're 18 years old this is going to result in 3.5 million dollars when you retire in scenario B we have the same account that started one year earlier and this actually results in 3.9 million dollars so you can see investing simply one year earlier resulted in almost half a million dollars more in your net worth that really shows the power of compound interest and how big of a difference one one single year can make that's why after you watch this video it's so important to just go out there and take action right away okay so now let's talk about active investing if you guys want to take an active investing approach you'll need to know that you have to do a lot of research I recommend investing at least one hour into any company that you want to buy and you'll need to learn how to look for Value in stocks through ratios financial statements history all that stuff for example the p ratio PEG ratio PB ratio and more we won't really talk about these in this video but I do have another more in-depth video going through all the stuff and I'll leave a link to that down below yeah overall this is probably not the best way to start if you are a teenager because this does take a lot of time and effort to learn I'd rather just encourage you guys to go out there star side hustle and start making more money now with a passive investing approach you're going to also want to do your research but the type of research you're doing is not nearly as difficult you'll be investing more into safe long-term mutual funds index funds and ETFs and essentially the main strategy here is dollar cost averaging DCA this is when you're putting a small amount into your Investments over time consistently for a long time for example putting in fifty dollars per week into an S P 500 Index Fund something like that if you're looking at buying individual stocks here's some good ones that have done extremely well of course this is not Financial advice apple and Amazon are two of the biggest tech companies vti vo and spy are three ETFs that track certain indexes and they've done extremely well over the years so now let's talk about how to get started investing so if you're under the age of 18 you're gonna have to have your parents open up a custodial account for you you can do this on platforms like Charles Schwab Vanguard TD Ameritrade M1 finance and more I'll be putting links down below to those platforms and yeah all these are very reputable platforms do your research before investing into anything and of course I recommend that you buy and hold safe long-term Securities like S P 500 ETFs and then if you're 18 or older you can actually open up your own brokerage account and I'll show you how to do that later on in this video so to open up a custodial account parents are going to need the following things their social security number drivers license number employer's name and address contact info birthday and social security number of the minor and then also statement information for funds you may want to transfer as a parent you're going to really want to start encouraging and educating your kids to start investing at an early age teach them the basics help guide them along and open up a custodial account for them as early as possible because like we mentioned earlier in this video the difference between getting started right now versus one year later is astronomical in terms of you know how much your portfolio will be worth in the future if you guys are 18 or older I recommend opening up a brokerage account where you can actually buy and sell stocks preferably one that is very easy to access like Weeble or MooMoo these are both platforms that you can access on your phone and right now if you sign up for Weeble or MooMoo they actually are giving out a ton of free stocks so I'll be putting links to those down below in the description all you guys have to do basically is use the link to sign up submit your application it takes just a few minutes set up a username and password find your account get your free stocks and then you can start buying stocks there's also alternative Investments that you guys can buy for example your Edge education your skills coaching mentorship or even starting up your own business these are all going to have much higher Roi than any stock Bond CD or even crypto and I'll really emphasize this but as a teenager the best thing you guys can do for yourself is to start developing high value skills and acquiring education and mentorship take those skills build your own service based business and drastically increase your income that way this is going to make you way more money than investing in stocks right now and yeah that's why I'm so bullish on this even though this is a guide on how to invest in the stock market I do want to say do that but also invest in yourself that is where you're going to get the absolute highest Roi possible so now I'm going to talk about some of the brokerages that you guys can use for your custodial account TD Ameritrade is a really good platform Vanguard of course is a very very good one and M1 Finance is also a great platform that allows you to easily invest with their Pi system so with TD Ameritrade they have a super strong reputation they have 24 7 customer support no minimum open deposits no contribution limits no maintenance fees and also a huge investment selection with Vanguard this is also a great place to open up your custody accounts you have tons of low-cost ETFs and index funds with some of the lowest expense ratios on the market they have commissioned for investing of course yeah this is another great choice to open up a custodial account with M1 Finance you're going to need an M1 Plus accounts this is going to give you access to Smart transfers you can actually get margin loans of up to 40 of your portfolio they have a high interest rates apy for your custodial checking accounts they also allow you to trade crypto there's no minimum balance to open up accounts yeah this is also another great option so now let's talk about some of my final thoughts one thing you guys need to know before opening up your custodial account is that there are going to be taxes so children actually file as part of their parents tax return so earnings in the accounts are tax-free up to one thousand one hundred fifty dollars in 2022 and the next 1 150 gets taxed at the lowest rate of 10 after that first two thousand three hundred dollars any additional earnings are taxed that the child's parents tax rate and yeah overall I think custodial accounts are really great I wish this was something that my parents had set for myself but if you're young and you're watching this video know that you are already way ahead of the curve and if you do start investing right now you're gonna have such a big Advantage when it comes to your overall net worth in the future investing is a long-term thing it also needs to be very very consistent so what I recommend doing is set up some type of custom schedule that allows you to automatically move money from your bank account to your custodial account this way you're basically just dollar cost averaging into the market open up that account as soon as possible to take advantage of compound interest and yeah like I mentioned earlier just invest the safe long term ETFs like vo and spy if you do want to invest in individual companies then you'll want to learn all the different metrics that you guys can use to you know analyze different stocks and I know we didn't really go over that in this video but I'm going to leave a link to a different full course that actually covers all this stuff it's also 100 free so that link is gonna be down below and beyond all this I want you guys to educate yourself on investing into yourself and your own business this is going to be the best return investment you ever make with your money so definitely set aside some money for that anyways I hope you guys enjoyed the video I hope you guys got some great value from this video feel free to reference at any time since I know we did Cover a lot of stuff and if you're under 18 and you want to start investing early forward this video to your parents because I'm not yes you can get started investing early with custodial accounts now all the resources that we talked about in this video are going to be down below in the description if you've got some value from this video make sure to hit that like button and also subscribe for more content just like this I make a ton of videos about personal finance investing in entrepreneurship thank you so much for your time and I'll see you in the next video peace foreign [Music]