Stock investment can be a winning or losing game. The trick is not only learning the rules, but the terminology. If you’ve never played the stock market, chances are you’ve heard some of the terms, but don’t know what they mean. The truth is stock investment terms can be quite confusing and there are many to learn. Let’s take a closer look at stock investment terminology for beginners.

Stock Terms

There are many terms that discuss the types of stocks, descriptions of stocks, and stock activity. Here are just a few terms beginners should be aware of:

Ask: Think of the ask price as the lowest a seller is willing to go when you’re haggling for something. In this case, you’re haggling for stock.

Bid: On the other end of the spectrum is the bid price. This is the most a buyer is willing to pay for a stock.

Book Value: This is something you must consider before purchasing stock in a company. The book value is what the company is worth after liabilities are subtracted.

Dividend: Another term you should be familiar with is dividend. Some companies pay shareholders quarterly or annually based on a portion of the company’s profits – this is known as a dividend.

Market Capitalization: It’s important to be aware of what a company’s market is capped at. This can be done by calculating the number of outstanding shares in the company by the current stock price.

P/E Ratio: You need to understand where your money is going when you buy a stock. One way to determine how much you’re actually paying, based on the profit of the company, is to consider the P/E ratio. This is done by consider what the current profit per share is compared to the cost of each share. For example, if the company is seeing a $4 profit per share and the shares are selling at $40 that’s a P/E ratio of 10, which means you’re paying 10 times what’s being earned.

Spread: The spread is the amount between the Ask and Bid price.

Stock: Put simply, the ownership of a company is divided into shares. These shares are sold so that the company can raise money and these are known as stock. You own “stock” in the company when you buy shares.

Yield: If you’re investing in companies that use dividends, you need to know what the yield is. The yield is how much percentage you can expect to see from your dividends.

Market Terms

Blue Chip: To be a blue chip company, the company must have showed consistent rise over its history. For example, Verizon Communications is a blue chip company.

Dow Jones Industrial Average: The Dow Jones is a list of blue chip companies.

NASDAQ: This is where company shares of technology companies are bought and sold.

People Terms

Bear: Think of a bear as a pessimist. Bears believe that the stock market will decline.

Bull: Bulls are the opposite of bears and the optimists of the stock market, believing that it will rise.

Broker: A broker is someone who buys and sells stocks for the investor.

It can be a lot to take in, but these terms are essential if you hope to be successful in stock investments. Learn them and understand them and you’ll have an easier time working with your own broker.

About the Author: Virgen Swor loves studying investments and recommends everyone brush up on their terminology before they start to consider the best stocks to buy, what broker to work with, or anything else. Knowledge is power!

Free classified ad sites can help you get more sales.  That is, they can work if you follow a few unwritten rules.

The Secret is In The Numbers

All business owners know that basically, business comes down to numbers.  If the numbers are “good”; business is good.  You need to have a large number of visitors coming to your site in order to increase your sales.  A classified ad site can help you increase your sales, but only if there is traffic to the site.

Reach Specific Customers

One of the keys to making sales is finding customers who want to buy.  Classified ad sites help because they allow sellers to customize their ads in order to reach customers in a certain niche marketing area.  You can sell diet items to customers looking for diet products or you can sell items to customers in your local city.  The choice is yours!

Choose Wisely

Finding the right price for your item is a big part of making sales. Classified ad sites can also help you with this process.  You can change your ad copy until you find the right price and start seeing sales.  At this point, you can begin to concentrate on getting your sales numbers up.

What To Sell

Perhaps you are selling multiple products which seem like great items–to you.  A classified ad site can help you determine which products have demand and which don’t.  After a while, you may begin to realize that customers simply do not seem to want to purchase some items; or not a lot of customers anyway.  This will allow you to concentrate your efforts on the products that are in demand, thereby increasing your sales.

Time is Money

We’ve all heard this many times before, but it is true.  If you spend a lot of time trying to sell an item, then you will have less time to sell other items or do other things.  To increase your profits, you need to work smarter!  Classified ad sites can help you to do just that. Working smarter means more  sales, more free time, and more profits.

Rules Can Change

Of course, business owners know that one of the keys to making profit and getting sales is to be able to quickly adjust to the needs of customers.  In other words, the rules can change; so must you.  Classified ad sites can help you to get more sales if you are willing and able to change your sales pitch and your prices to reflect what customers want and need. That is the key to using these sites to help you get more sales.

Want to learn how to do people search free online? Then read this article for a start and it might give you a pretty good idea.