Preface

Here is a summary of some introductory knowledge and common sense about US stocks/futures. I am not a professional operator. If there are any deficiencies, please point them out. I will keep updating, and I will mark any updates as they come. If you have any questions, please ask or discuss below.

Before getting into the topic, let me say something official: There are risks in the stock market, so investment needs to be cautious.

A must-read for getting started

U.S. stocks are different from the domestic stock market. They can be bought and sold on the same day. You can sell them the next second after buying them, and there is no limit on the rise or fall. You may see a rise of 600% in one day, or a drop from 100 points to 0 points in a few days. So when you are jealous of the profits, do not calmly observe the risks. Here are some basic common sense I compiled:

• Open an account: The brokerage will be mentioned below, go there to open an account.
• Stock selection: This is a problem that many newcomers encounter. My suggestion is to choose a few companies you know and look at them first. This is just like looking for a job. Start with familiar ones, such as Apple, Google, and Amazon.
• Chinese concept stocks: The reason why they are called Chinese concept stocks is that they are indeed concept stocks. Their main business is in China, but they are listed in the United States via backdoor. Most of these stocks are weird and are not recommended for newcomers.
• Pattern day trader: This is very important. If your capital is less than ,000, day trade (buying and selling the same stock on the same day) cannot exceed four times a week. If it exceeds, you will not be able to trade on the same day. This is a protection mechanism. Of course, if you have enough money, you can ignore it, but according to personal experience, unless you are a very skilled trader, there is no need to operate so much.
• Financial reports and dividends: Every (most) company will issue a financial report every quarter, and the contents are all public, but they are relatively complicated. But there will be dividends after the financial report is released. If you happen to hold it (before a certain date), you can get the dividends. I have talked about this in detail before, you can refer to " Detailed explanation of dividend dates and various terms before and after US stock financial reports 》
• Futures: I rarely touch stocks, after all, I don’t have time to study them, but futures are relatively simple, mainly gold, oil, and natural gas. We can't buy them directly, we can only buy their ETFs. If interested friends can follow my mini program (at the back), I will follow them there.
• ETF: ETF is actually a basket of stocks, covering almost everything you can think of (such as Chinese stock market ETFs, such as gold and oil, such as the rise and fall of US stocks). They generally appear in pairs of forward and reverse directions, and are leveraged, so they are very exciting. For example, the three-fold ETFs of gold mines: NUGT and DUST, one is forward and the other is reverse, and they can make a 20% increase or decrease in no time. However, it is highly not recommended to use triple ETFs, because their shock losses are very strong (Baidu's own), and you will lose money if you hold them.
• Technical analysis: Technical analysis of US stocks is very useful, and with more and more machine trading, various lines and positions will become more and more accurate. You can study by yourself or communicate with me.
• Fear Index: The trading symbol for the CBOE Market Volatility Index, commonly used to measure the implied volatility of S&P 500 Index options. Often referred to as the "fear index" or "panic indicator", it is a measurement method to understand the market's expectations for market volatility in the next 30 days (wiki). This indicator, just like its name, represents the degree of "panic". The focus is on its ETFs. The panic index generally reaches a minimum of 10 and a maximum impact of dozens. But ETFs are different. ETFs have neither bottom nor top, so don’t think you can make a lot by buying panic index ETFs when the market plummets.

Common tools

• TC 2000: A very professional chart viewing tool, used for technical analysis, charged monthly.
• Investing: https://www.investing.com, a very good website for viewing stocks, it has an APP, and the ads on the APP are very annoying.
• Dividend query: http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/aapl/dividend-history

trading broker

U.S. stock trading is operated through stock brokers. Different brokers charge different operating fees (single transaction, such as buying is counted once, selling is counted once). Here are the fee charts of several major brokers (not all):

If you want to check, you can go to: https://www.stockbrokers.com/compare and just look at the functions. The ratings are of no reference value.

For beginners, the difference is not big, because many operations such as short selling and options are not used, so just choose a large and reliable one. After all, capital security is more important. I personally recommend TD Bank and Scottrade. The former is because its software is very easy to use and you can save the cost of a set of TC2000. The latter is because there are too many advertisements.

In addition, Robinhood has no handling fees, and many beginners start with it. The only drawback is that there is no computer version and all operations are done on the mobile phone. However, the free operation fee is still very impressive. Here is the invitation code:

Open a Robinhood account:http://share.robinhood.com/jingt

Due to tax issues, these account openings require a US Social Security Number (SSN). If not, you can register on Scottrade's Chinese website. It has one specifically for Asia-Pacific users: https://chinese.scottrade.com/.

Special attention:If it's really too troublesome, you can also use a "secondary" brokerage such as Tiger. I haven't used it myself, but judging from the feedback from friends, it's still very good. They all have an underlying trading channel. For example, Tiger uses Interactive Brokers IB. Interested friends can check it out themselves.

WeChat applet

This is a small program I wrote so that you can see some of the operation reminders I did. I usually don't have much time to operate frequently, so I only remind those who have a relatively large grasp of it. Those who are interested can pay attention.