For several months now, I have been learning as much as possible about investment as a precursor to getting into trading; before doing any actual trading, I decided to formulate clear goals and strategies.

I posted before about the broad strategy I have decided on; splitting all the money I invest evenly between the two apps Robinhood and Acorns which focus on short and long-term investment respectively, and offer exceptional pricing compared to other platforms, especially traditional brokerages and banks.

The long-term half of my broad strategy runs itself; Acorns manages a diverse portfolio for you, selecting a wide range of blue chips, bonds, industrials, etc.

The other half of this broad strategy will require clear planning as to how I will use Robinhood to do the short-term speculative trading.

I will need to decide on growth goals for each trade as well as how to pick stocks.

So far, I am leaning towards an initial goal of +5% with a stop-loss of -2.5% per trade, unless the stock’s range suggests another goal.

In the long-term, I would love to develop analytics tools to help sift through larger datasets and make more complex predictions, factoring in volume, social-media sentiment, press sentiment, and performance data… Baby steps.

The methods I like so far for picking stocks are earnings reports, product launches, and current events as they relate to public sentiment.

Stay Tuned!