There’s several types of trading strategies and they will correlate with the trader what the trader’s trading goals and risk tolerance are. The easiest way to invest is to just buy and hold a basket of stocks that reflect the market’s performance. The easiest way to do this is through buying an ETF like VOO or SPY. This doesn’t involve any trading, and an investor that uses this strategy will enjoy an average of 12% return over a long timespan. To decrease the risk of this strategy(like if the investor is nearing retirement), the investor can split the portfolio between the ETF and bonds, for example 70% SPY and 30% BND. Bonds are a lot safer than stock, and will keep the portfolio value up during downmarkets. On the other side, if an investor wants to increase his risk, he can buy something that will multiply the market’s return. An example of this would be buying tqqq, which will 3x the daily return of QQQ, an ETF that follows tech stock. If an investor wants to play an active part in his investment strategy he can try active trading, meaning the trader will proactively buy and sell stock because he believes he can tell when a stock is going to go up or down. We’ll go over those strategies in part 2 of this post.