South Pacific Stock Exchange

First Time Investors

Introduction

Everyone today appreciates the need to save for the future. Whether for a house, for children’s or one’s own education, to buy a car, for your wedding or for use after retirement, we have future needs for which we need to start accumulating funds well in advance. All these goals can be realized through excellent financial planning. The fact is that the financial decisions that we make today will to a large extent significantly affect the lifestyles we lead in the future, but how many of us have taken the time to carefully map out a plan to help us achieve these financial goals?

An intelligent financial plan entails investing your money in an appropriate combination of assets with potential to help you better achieve your goals. If you invest wisely, you can maximize the earnings on your investments. You need to act today and think about a plan to help you achieve your financial goals which becomes a road map for your investment journey.

There are many investment avenues available, but a wise investor does not invest on impulse, a hot tip or follow the herd. Instead, an investor should evaluate information to make intelligent choices of investments. Becoming a successful investor is not something that happens by chance. The difference between investors who have been successful and those who haven’t is likely to be that successful investors took the time to learn and understand the basics about investing and followed some simple investing practices.

Every journey begins with a single step. The first step that you need to make is to start setting aside funds today for your future goals. But the best journeys require more than one step. We wish you well on a long and productive investment journey.

When you think about investing in the share market, there are a few things to consider.

Outline your current ﬁnancial situation — set your expenses against your income and identify whether you have surplus funds available for investment or not. You cannot become an investor until you have mastered the art of saving.
Identify your investment objectives — what are you saving and investing for? What do you want to achieve and when do you want to achieve it by?
Outline whether you are investing for a short-term or long-term period
Identify whether you are investing for income, growth or both
Identify how much risk you are prepared to take to earn returns i.e. how much money you can afford to lose

Investment Process

An important thing to know is that the buying and selling of shares in SPX listed entities requires the services of a Stockbroker.

This section of SPX website is targeted to existing and prospective retail investors and college/university students with a view to help them understand how share market works and also to help them get started with share market investments.