About the author: Blain Reinkensmeyer As Head of Research at StockBrokers.com, Blain Reinkensmeyer has 18 years of trading experience with over 1,000 trades placed during that time. Referenced as a leading expert on the US online brokerage industry, Blain has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes, and the Chicago Tribune, among others.
The use of borrowed money “levers” or exaggerates the result of price movement. Suppose the stock moves to $200 a share and you sell it. If you had used your own money exclusively, your return would be 100% on your investment [($20,000 -$10,000)/$10,000]. If you had borrowed $5,000 to buy the stock and sold at $200 per share, your return would be 300 % [(20,000-$5,000)/$5,000] after repaying the $5,000 loan and excluding the cost of interest paid to the broker.
Diversify your portfolio with a healthy balance of low-risk, moderate-risk, and maybe some high-risk investments. Play it safe with the majority of your investments in tried and true stock options that always return a profit, and continue to invest in them. Now the profit margin may not be massive by any means with these, but it’s a safe bet that long-term investment will yield a healthy ROI. You should also invest in some moderate-risk options that show some promise of yielding a greater ROI percentage than the safer and more stable stock options. It is important to be careful and do some research on these investments, and try to get a sense of if it’s worth investing in. This is especially true for the high-risk investments.
While that may sound like outdated advice, in late 2012, an American marketing executive explained how he had turned $20,000 into $2 million during the recession. Chris Camillo explained that Wall Street is quite homogenous and tends to be behind the curve on trends involving females, young people and those on low incomes. Camillo invested in stocks that anyone could have, he just spotted trends before the investment bankers did and was able to make some very sizable profits.