Trading 101: Why The US Stock Market is the best market?

There are lots of places in the world that people trade stocks, but we're going to focus on one country, which is the United States of America. Why, you might ask? Well, first, the US has a really big economy. It's the third largest country with over 320 million people, and Americans love to spend money. In the US, we have a few different stock exchanges, but we'll focus on the main ones. First, there is the New York Stock Exchange, the NYSE, and the AMEX. These are the oldest ones. They usually have big, well-known companies like McDonald's and Coca-Cola. Then there's the NASDAQ, which is where you'll find a lot of tech companies like Google and Facebook. It started in the 1970s and changed how stocks were traded by using computers. Besides those, there are other smaller exchanges in different cities like Chicago and Boston. And then there's something called the OTC, where smaller, less-known companies are traded. They're kind of like the underdogs of the stock market. Plus, there are so many different companies to choose from. Tens of thousands, in fact. You can find a company for everything you think of. You can find a company that does CBD, you can find a company that does mining, and you can find company that does CBD mining if you look good enough. And new ones are added all the time. The opportunities are there. Another cool thing about trading in the US is there is a lot of liquidity. That just means it's easy to buy and sell stocks quickly at a fair price. Plus, there are a lot of companies and websites that help us trade smarter, like news sites, fancy software, and robots that analyze data for us. So trading in the US gives us more opportunity, saves time, and helps us make more money. You see, the US stock exchange is where all the magic happens. Every day, billions and billions of dollars are being traded. That's a lot of money exchanging hands, which means a lot of chance for us to make money as well. And here's a fun fact: on the US stock exchange, we can also make money when the stock price goes down, not just up. It's called short selling, but we'll learn more about that later on. Now let's talk about trading hours. The stock exchanges are open from Monday to Friday from 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM Eastern time. But there's also something called pre-market, which is open for 2.5 hours before the market opens, and after-hours trading, which is open for 4 hours after the market closes. But wait, if you can buy and sell during those times, why aren't they considered regular trading hours? The simple answer is we don't trade them because they have lower volume usually, which means the amount of people buying and selling is substantially lower. It's important to remember that behind our computers, there are real people buying and selling stocks too. It's not only computers. Technology lets us trade from home, but we're still dealing with real people on the other side. Some brokers will allow you to trade pre-market and after-hours, and some won't. It basically depends on the broker you use. And now that we know the basics of the stock market, let's dive into how we buy and sell stocks.