Investing in JSE: 4 Tips to Get Started

As you aim to diversify your investment portfolio, you may consider making your first investment at Johannesburg Stock Exchange (or JSE for short). In essence, it’s South Africa’s main stock exchange and one of the oldest ones still around today, trusted by millions of investors from all around the world.

Still, it’s a good practice to research what you’re getting yourself into, so with this in mind, we’ll get you on the right track by giving you 4 tips about how to start investing at JSE:

  1. Get acquainted with JSE

Johannesburg Stock Exchange is regulated by the Prudential Authority (PA) and Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), a regulatory model that goes by the name of twin-peaks. The former keeps a watchful eye on the financial institutions, while the latter oversees the equities market and its operations. 

The stock exchange lists stocks that fall under various sectors, including:

– Real estate

– Oil and gas

– Construction

– Food and beverage

– Telecommunications

– Mining

– Banking and financial

– and more

This allows you to diversify your portfolio and thus mitigate the risk by not having all of your eggs in one basket. Since JSE is Africa’s largest stock exchange and trusted by many individual trading professionals and large companies, this can give you a peace of mind knowing that your investments are in safe hands.

  1. Research what apps can help you invest better

Having the right apps at your disposal can help you make a better and more informed investing decision. Since there are a lot of these you can download, we’ll give you a brief overview of our recommendations.

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– MarketWatch: a consolidated news source to help you monitor the market and make the right investment call. Since it’s designed with the busy trader in mind, you’ll find that it does a great job at summarizing the most important global market events.

– ThinkTrader: through this well-established mobile app by ThinkMarkets that keeps getting great reviews to this very day, you can invest in shares and CFDs straight from the comfort of your mobile device. It features reporting tools, 24/7 support, one-click closing, and organized monitoring of your market positions.

– Bloomberg: this app gives you real-time insights into stocks, commodities, currencies, and bonds. Thanks to it being highly customizable, you can set it to monitor the exact things that are of interest to you. Its intuitive user interface is a big plus.

Smartphones make it rather convenient to monitor the markets from pretty much anywhere.

  1. Know the fundamentals of technical and fundamental analysis

This holds true whether you’re planning to open an account at Johannesburg Stock Exchange or any other investment platform. In essence, technical analysis has to do with checking the stock’s historical price movements as portrayed by graphs and charts. Although several software solutions have been developed exactly for that purpose, the good news is that you don’t necessarily need to use any of them to study these charts. You do, however, need to know the fundamentals of this craft, which is where things can get complicated.

Unlike technical analysis, fundamental analysis focuses on getting a broader picture of what the company does, what its balance sheet looks like, what the state of its cash-flow is, and so forth. As part of the research, you might also want to look into how the company is managed, which could give you a valuable clue about whether the company is worth investing in or not. In case all of this sounds too daunting and complicated, there’s also the option of buying a pre-curated basket of shares such as an index fund or a mutual fund. This way, you mitigate your risk by spreading it out, and you won’t have to spend an enormous amount of time researching each stock individually.

  1. Open an account at JSE

Before you can start investing, you should create your share investing account at JSE. Once you’ve provided the essential profile information, the next step is to deposit the funds you’ll use to purchase stocks with. You can make a deposit from your checking or savings bank account, either of which should work fine.

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Prior to investing, be sure to utilize the smart filtering feature. One thing it can do is to help you narrow down the choices to a specific sector you’ve laid your eyes on, among many other filters. Once you’re ready to make your first pick, feel free to submit an order. Keep in mind that Johannesburg Stock Exchange is only operational during business days.

Conclusion

When you get the essentials down, getting started at JSE is easy. Follow the steps we’ve outlined in this article and you should be well on your way to making your first investment.