How the Market Works Final Reflection

Throughout this stock market simulation, I became more aware of the overall stock market and the basic norms of investing. As I became more familiar with buying stocks, I realized the importance of following the overall trend of the market and buying when the market or stock dipped as for my first few investments, I paid little attention to the market and, as a result, lost money. After my first few investments, I learnt that before I continued investing any further, it was essential that I determined whether or not I wanted to take a bearish or bullish stance on the market since this would influence how much money I'd invest. Ultimately, I chose to view the market from a bullish lens since the market seemed to have an overall upward trend and because this was a short term competition. After choosing this, I discovered that I needed to decide what I wanted my portfolio to look like. After haphazardly investing minimal amounts into a mix of fairly random stocks, I realized that I needed to look at the market and choose whether or not I wanted a volatile, stable, or mixed portfolio. Through talking with my friends in this class and my parents, I found out that having a mixed portfolio was in my opinion, the best option. Following this, I realized how essential it was to research my stocks prior to investing as when my friends in this class told me about how Ulta Beauty had jumped, rather than conducting my own research and looking at the trend of the market, I invested a few thousand dollars into the stock which ended up crashing and losing me a lot of money for most of the game. After making this mistake, I ensured that I went to reliable sites like Zach's Ratings to influence my following decisions on buying stocks. Overall, prior to this project, I had little to no knowledge of the stock market but as the game progressed and I continued researching and gaining information, I feel much more educated and aware of the workings of the stock market.