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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?
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.
