In order to raise money, companies sell a portion of their assets to investors in the form of shares. When making investments in a company, an investor goes to a stock exchange (though the use of a computer) in order to buy shares of a company he or she is interested in. Then if the company does well and makes money, the company gives part of their earnings back to their investor, that act is called paying a dividend. Another way an investor can make money on the shares they bought is by selling the shares at a higher price than what they bought it for.

Each company has a ticker symbol for example Apples symbol is AAPL. This symbol differs from market to market. In China they use numbers while as in Europe they use 4 letters. This can help the stock market because it abbreviates the names of the companies making it faster and easier to pronounce.

There are also mutual funds which are made up of many different company’s stocks. People invest in funds when they want to avoid the risk of putting all their money into just one company’s stock. This can help you lower your risk when the stock market falls, but it also might reduce the money you earn when the stock market rises.

Many of the companies that I have decided to invest in went badly, but a few of them did not do so bad.The ones that did the worst were the companies: Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp and Wins Finance Holdings Inc. At first those two companies were the ones doing the best, but as I decided to buy more shares they became the worst ones.

The general trend that my multiple companies have been showing is that they start off pretty well but then as they go on they usually tend to get worse through time. Another trend that is seen, is if a company is doing really well I would usually buy more shares from that company; but when I check on it the following day it tends to become really bad. At some point all of the shares from different companies have been deleted, because they were doing poorly (except for the ones I have now). Most of the companies that I invested in were pretty small so if the part of the company I invested in was doing badly then it would affect it a lot, making the percentage go down a lot.

The main thing I would like to change about my portfolio is how I structured it and completed it, because I haven't been filling it out the way that it was meant to be filled out. I would invest in a few of the stocks that I had from before, because the other ones were quite terrible. One thing that I would change about my portfolio is the companies that I decide to invest in but more specifically how I did it and filled it out, since I did it incorrectly. Throughout this project I have learned many things and forgot a few on the way that I only now come to remember. I learned not to invest in big companies, because they shares cost a lot of money and don’t give you much back. I learned how the stock market works and how to find out how my company is doing. I also learned how to make trades and find out how well or how poor they were doing. I did this by checking there last price and there current price. Overall I really enjoyed this project and thought it was a great way to learn about stocks, because we were able to participate in it and look at real life situations.