Investing 101 help for dummies!
Trying to understand investing and brokerage accounts, and have read about it, but it's still really confusing to me with all the jargon. Below is what I think is what I understand, but please correct me if I'm wrong.
So basically, if I open a brokerage account, it's money that can be used to buy shares of stock/bonds/funds/etc. I get that much. So if I transfer a chunk of money to this brokerage account, unless I buy shares with that amount, in essence it's just like another bank account with a routing/account number? So if I withdraw money from it for any reason, there are not ramifications from withdrawing, since it withdraws like a bank account? So if I don't buy any shares, then there is not much possibility of my brokerage amount growing?
So if I decide to buy shares with this amount, I'm assuming each share I buy, I pay that trading fee that's listed in the account info (usually ~$5?) ? If buying a lot of shares I can see that adding up? Or is this only for if you trade the share to another share?
Do people usually only have a portion of their brokerage account in shares and a portion in cash? I'm assuming that only the cash amount can be withdrawn as above but the part in shares cannot? What percentage of their brokerage accounts do people usually hold in shares and how much in cash?
Also, are mutual funds, ETFs, and index funds the same thing?
Note: already have Emergency Savings in a savings account, a Roth IRA, and a work 401K
Submitted April 02, 2019 at 11:26AM by sheisaeval https://ift.tt/2VeLINk
