What words of advice would you give a 25-year-old who is looking to start investing but still afraid to?

It is natural to be afraid BUT what is most scary is when you invest without knowing what you are doing and blindly following what others say.

Most common reason why people are afraid is usually because of the risks associated to investing. Different people have different risk appetite, some people are able to think logicially when they see losses because they are long term minded. Its common for a stock to go up and down because they are usually affected by the news. For example, When US President Donald Trump was tested positive for Covid-19, the whole stock market drops because of the fear. Are you able to stomach the downside? That being said, i am referring to individual stocks. If you are can only stomach lesser risks, you should look into ETFs.

I believe there are already many of such answers here in this community so i would skip those. ULTIMATELY, PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH IN knowing what is good to invest in, understand those companies well before you start.​​​

Hi there!

It's great that you are starting to invest, i'm happy for you!

I think when you are starting out, the most important things would be to learn about investment philosophy and styles. Answer a few questions

1. What is my financial goal

2. Risk appetite

3. Circle of competence

Read, read, read!! There are also many youtubers and webinars you can join in to watch to learn about the basics of investing. For basics, majority of the information is pretty uniform.

HOWEVER, after a certain point, we need to start discerning and filtering out what to listen to and what not to. It is difficult to discern at the start, so get your information from different sources and cross reference them.

The biggest dichotomy, in my humble opinion, would be your investing approach. Passive or Active investing.

For Passive, the information on seedly and majority of financial advisory pages/instagram accounts are good. thewokesalaryman, SimpleSum, SAV Finance just to name a few...

For Active, this is where the filtering comes to play. I won't load you with too much because these are already a lot to take in and research on. Do let me know if active investing is something that interest you and you want more information... but it's not for everyone.