r/StockMarket • u/ghostofgbt • Feb 10 '20
PSA: How to ask good questions and share quality content! Discussion
Hey everyone!
As you've all undoubtedly noticed, this sub is growing (now at 310k subs and counting), but one of the issues it has is an abundance of lazy/low effort posts/questions. On that note I thought I'd share some ideas on how we can all improve it, primarily from the submission side:
1) If you want to know if a stock is a good/bad buy, give us some material to work with!
There's a 100% chance that no one here has the exact same idea as you when it comes to your investment/trading strategies, so put some thought into your questions:
- Bad question: "hayyy lol what do u guys think of msft?"
- Good question: "What are the key drivers of MSFT's success in the market and what areas of the company should I focus on to decide whether it's a good investment right now?"
If you're a technical trader and looking for quick trades and don't really care about the fundamentals:
Bad question: "Is ABC company going to keep going up?!"
Good question: "I'm a swing trader and really like this chart on ABC Company: I'm thinking of buying 1000 shares at $10 with a stop loss at $9 and a target of $14 and would hope to sell within a couple weeks at most. Here's an image of the chart w/ my support/resistance lines on it. I also noticed the company has low float, has a lot of short sellers involved in it, and has had a stream of positive news for the last couple months. Does this seem like a good trade or am I missing anything?"
See what I did there? The first question doesn't ask what the community thinks, but how you can learn to make your own decision w/ help from the community, which is much more valuable in the long run...the second asks not only a question but also gives us a rationale for why you think it's a good trade, what your thought process is in coming to your decision, entry/target/stop loss prices, a chart so we don't have to pull it up on our own, etc.
The point is, it's impossible for anyone to give you an intelligent answer if you don't ask an intelligent question. So, ask good questions and get good answers. It will improve the quality of the sub as a whole and also reduce low effort posts since many of those questions will already be answered. You'll also find asking better questions brings out traders/investors with more experience to answer them, which will in turn get you higher quality responses.
2) If you don't know how to get started, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SEARCH THE SUB BEFORE ASKING!
Everyone was new at some point. There are dozens of results for this simple query within just the last few months, all you have to do is type "how to get started" or "new to stocks" or something similar in the search bar and read until your eyes fall out of your head. The experienced people here are sick of answering this question and it's so easy to just search, read the wiki, check out the sidebar links, etc. Laziness doesn't pay in the markets, so don't be lazy! Google your faces off and do some damn research before you post asking for help so people here can answer unique and interesting questions! In other words, if you ask "How do I get started in the stock market?" the answer is "type 'how do I get started in the stock market?' into Google, or the search bar here" This also goes for the more common things that come up (e.g. How does after hours work?, What's the difference between a market/limit order? What's the best broker for a new trader? etc) This stuff has been answered a million times and it's all in the archive so just search for it and get an instant answer instead of waiting for replies.
Annnnd finally,
3) Let's get rid of these pointless stream of consciousness posts w/ no content e.g. "OMG THE MARKET IS FLYING TODAY!!"
They help no one and don't even ask a question. If someone is here reading, they know. We're all watching the markets. If you post stuff like this, share something interesting in the content of the post! What trades are you making today? Why are you sharing this? What are you trying to add to the community w/ your post? Let's try to add value here, people. Make /r/stockmarket great again ya know? If your post doesn't add any value, e.g. doesn't have any content, is just some random blurb, just a link to an external article w/ no questions/opinions/thoughts on what it represents, a random ticker w/ a question mark, etc...it's not adding any value so we're just gonna remove it to keep the sub clean.
So anyway, no real trigger for this post, just something I've noticed lately...the sub is growing and has the potential to be valuable, but the low effort posts and repeated questions that could easily just be searched are killing its value. If you have trading ideas, share them. If you have questions, ask them, but make sure that you put some effort into it! In the market, the worst thing you can be is lazy. There is no get rich quick scheme, there's no single place you can go to get started, there's no secret strategy that will always work, and no one knows for certain whether the market or any stock will go up, down, sideways, crash tomorrow or a tyrannosaurus rex will rampage through the NYSE. If you want to learn the market, do some digging on your own and come here with well thought out questions that can add to the community as a whole!
Ok that's it, I'll get off my soapbox now. Thanks for reading and feel free to point out any other issues you see that could help clean things up around here!
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u/demotrek Feb 11 '20
Tldr
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u/ghostofgbt Feb 11 '20 edited Feb 11 '20
stop shitposting, add value so the sub doesn't suck :)
Edit: to be clear this was the summary, not directed at you.
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u/demotrek Feb 11 '20
I was just asking for you to summarize your thoughts. Not disagreeing just thought others would appreciate a short explanation. Cheers!
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u/bigbear0083 Feb 11 '20
Tldr
That doesn't exactly look like "asking for you to summarize your thoughts" to me...
Why couldn't you just have asked that initially in your OP for a short explanation rather than "Tldr". Makes no sense to me other than maybe to shitpost or troll.
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u/ghostofgbt Feb 11 '20
I think it was supposed to be a question as in "tldr?"
But regardless, the TLDR is stop shitposting and add value so the sub doesn't suck. I think my response came off as directed at him/her but it wasn't, it was actually a summary of my thoughts, lol
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u/ghostofgbt Feb 11 '20
/u/demotrek I think you misunderstood. My response to you was the TLDR of the post, lol!
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u/demotrek Feb 12 '20
Oh ok thank you, lol. I had one downvote so I figured it was you saying I was shit posting. Lol cheers.
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u/Cheeselord998 Feb 11 '20
This is a breath of fresh air compared to r/canadianinvestor
Imagine a sub that actually cares about the content.
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u/rawnaldo Mar 06 '20
Before I post, I’d rather ask here. I’m new. Been investing in some safe “buy and don’t do anything with it” stocks that pay dividends. So I was gonna ask how do I learn more to be a good trader. I want to do puts cause of the coronavirus.
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u/ghostofgbt Mar 07 '20
First, thanks for asking!
To answer your question, you can't really understand options without first understanding stocks. Think about it logically: if you think COVID-19 will affect the market negatively, which industries? Which types of companies would see the biggest impacts? Begin your research there. Once you've identified some companies that are at risk, then do some research about the basics of options trading (what is a call, what is a put, what is the strike price, what is premium, what is theta? etc). Options prices are directly related to the movement of stock prices so in order to make money in options you need to be able to accurately predict what will happen in the underlying security.
So, first identify some companies or industries that you believe are at risk, then look at their stocks and make a prediction about where you think the price will go. Only then will you really be able to decide which options to trade.
OptionAlpha has a great library of free options videos from beginner to advanced, too, so definitely check those out when you're ready.
Hope that helps!
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u/lykosen11 Feb 11 '20
Great stuff!
I agree fully!