Today the womens investment club that I founded had its biggest event yet. We had a guest who works for the Baltic stock market (Kristi Õng) and there were about 50 people in attendance, which shows quite a high level of interest for stock.

Since the room was a mix of people with experience and those that havent started yet, then the presenter had to balance well between those expectations, but overall questions and the quality of discussion definitely made everyone leave the event a bit smarter. There were a few small pieces of information that I ended up remembering as well.

Overall, the biggest problem with investing into stocks seems to be that people have an unreasonably high level of anxiety when the topic of the stock market comes up, so I thought Id just underline the importance of looking beyond the few myths that exist about the stock market .

You can lose all your money

While technically this is true, it would honestly take quite a lot of talent to lose all your money, even with stocks Id guess an elaborate and high risk options strategy might be efficient in achieving that. If youre a risk aware and rational investor then its possible to temporarily lose value of your investments, but in the long run youre still going to make a decent return. (Barring any disastrous events that would wipe out the whole economy.)

Big time investors make all the money

While the market is dominated by large scale investors, then especially in the past decade small scale investors have started to take back their share of the market. While there are definitely benefits to trading in large amounts, then an average person can make a decent return just as well as long as they set a solid strategy and follow it.

The fees will eat up all your earnings

While fees are important to keep an eye on, unless you are doing serious day-trading at a loss or making deals with amounts that are disproportionately small, then fees on most stock purchases are manageable, overall they are even smaller than most funds. While its good to be aware of the potential impact of fees, then earnings are lost by bad decisions, not just ordinary trading fees.

The cost of entry is too high

While it is true that getting started in stocks takes a bit more capital than some other investment instruments, then this too is not out of your reach. Of course, if you can only save 10-50€ per month then stocks might not be in your horizon yet and social lending would be a better start, then youd be surprised at what a bit of perseverance can get you. Setting aside 50€/month for a year is enough to make a reasonable stock purchase once a year. While that might seem slow, then you have to start somewhere.

But what if x y z happens

In the case of Estonia the argument here is that what if Russia invades. Or what if the Euro fails. Or what if some other disaster strikes us. The problem with living in fear like that is that you never get around to doing anything, disaster may strike at any moment. Yes, there is geopolitical risk currently, but that would apply to all other investments as well. In many ways stock may be more stable than some due to the internationality. Risk goes hand in hand with returns diversify to the best of your ability, but dont let fear stand in the way of financial freedom.

Bonus: But I dont know enough

I have yet to hear a single investor utter the statement that they know all there is to know. If anything, the longer youve been investing the more you realise what a huge world finance is and how much more you need to learn. You can spend years reading all the books in the world, but they will only help you up to a point you need to get started to learn through experience. Ive been actively reading up about investing for five years and I still discover completely new areas, thats just something that comes with the field.