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I am young, just started my career and looking to begin investing so I can make my money work for me. I know there are two types of investments: short term and long term.

Could anyone provide some advice on how to approach short-term goal investing in India? What do I need to learn about? What should I be considering?

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    Short term involves greater risk. I would advise to start long term and as you learn you can slowly start trading. Also indian version of trading is more about getting sms's on your cell phone and follow those msgs like idiots. I hope you don't do that. Learn well my friend don't just be an another indian trader.
    – Bhavin
    Mar 3, 2013 at 11:27
  • yes, i have seen my seniors do that. Sure i will keep that in mind.
    – tridip1931
    Mar 5, 2013 at 6:38

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Just to clarify Short Team Goals & Long Term Goals... Long Term goals are for something in future, your retirement fund, Children’s education etc.

Short Term goals are something in the near future, your down payment for car, house, and holiday being planned.

First have both the long and short terms goals defined. Of Couse you would need to review both these goals on a ongoing basis...

To meet the short term goals you would need to make short term investments. Having arrived at a short term goal value, you would now need to make a decision as to how much risk you are willing [also how much is required to take] to take in order to meet your goal.

For example if you goal is to save Rs 100,000 by yearend for the car, and you can easily set aside Rs 8,000 every month, you don't really need to take a risk. A simple Term / Fixed Deposit would suffice you to meet your goal.

On the other hand if you can only save Rs 6,000 a year, then you would need to invest this into something that would return you around 35%. You would now need to take a risk. Stocks market is one option, there are multiple types of trades [day trades, shorts, options, regular trades] that one can do ... however the risk can wipe out even your capital. As you don't know these types of investments, suggest you start with dummy investing using quite a few free websites, MoneyControl is one such site, you get pseudo money and can buy sell and see how things actually move. This should teach you something about making quick gains or losses without actually gaining or loosing real money.

Once you reach some confidence level, you can start trading using real money by opening a trading account almost every other bank in India offers online trading linked to bank account.

Never lose sight of risk appetite, and revise if every now and then. When you don't have dependents, you can easily risk money for potential bumper, however after you have other commitments, you may want to tone down...

Edit: http://moneybhai.moneycontrol.com/moneybhai-rules.html is one such site, there are quite a few others as well that offer you to trade on virtual money. Try this for few months and you will understand whether you are making right decissions or not.

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  • Thanks Dheer for the reply, can you suggest some good free tutorials to learn stocks market and do i have other options than stocks.
    – tridip1931
    Mar 5, 2013 at 6:37
  • More riskier and advanced, derivatives, Fx Markets, Commodities ...
    – Dheer
    Mar 5, 2013 at 12:27
  • Take advantage of any employer matching in retirement savings. (Does India have that?) That's free money. Also, diversify. Put the bulk of your long term investments in more solid investments (lower risk, lower return). Put the rest in more high risk, high return investments. If you lose, you put off your vacation, new car, house purchase, whatever, but you don't risk your retirement, kids' college fund, etc. If you find that you enjoy investing, shave off a small slice of the high risk money and try to find the next Apple or Google.
    – Xalorous
    Aug 18, 2016 at 23:11
  • @Xalorous There is employer match in retirement fund. In most organisation this is fixed and already part of CTC.
    – Dheer
    Aug 19, 2016 at 0:23

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