 What is going on everybody, it's Stas here. Welcome back to yet again, another video and yes, I'm in my car right now. I'm kind of in a weird setting. I'm in the city. I had some time to film this video while I'm waiting to pick someone up. So I figured why not do it right now? So we're going to be talking about, I have a bunch of notes here, three keys to successfully investing in the stock market. This is an investing video, not trading. This is simply investing long term in the stock market. So let's just hop right into it guys. If you enjoy this video, feel free to drop a comment down below. Tell me what you liked about it after watching it. Leave a like if you do like it and subscribe to the channel. If you're new, if I do earn your subscription and let's get right into it guys. So the first thing that you need to do, the first key is to understand how to read financial statements guys. This is literally like the blueprint to a business. It tells you a story of how a business is performing, right? There's three different financial statements that I like to focus on and a bunch of other investors out there like to focus on as well. One of them being the balance sheet that shows assets and liabilities, right? It shows investments, right? What long term liabilities a company has, right? Short term liabilities. You also have the income statement which shows sales, revenue, right? Expenses of a business and it shows the net income, the profit, how much money is this business making, right? Then you have the statement of cash flows, which shows the cash inflows and the cash outflows of any particular business and understanding these will give you again a roadmap of where the business could potentially be going. The track record of the business over the past five, 10, 15, 20 years. So you can see how have they been growing their revenues? How have they been growing their earnings per share? You get to understand a bunch of different ratios from just analyzing these numbers that can help you in computing a future value of the company based off of cash flows. There's a bunch of different things that you can pull out from these financial statements that will help you in the future and that will help you currently in picking businesses, right? You need to see how quick a company is growing year over year, quarter over quarter, things like this, right? And if you guys hear a bunch of background noise, yes, I'm in the city, like I mentioned, there's a bunch of sirens, motorcycles, stuff like that. So I apologize if the background, the audio is a bit funky, but key number one, understand how to read financial statements very, very, very critical when it comes to investing in the stock market. So number two is fully understand a business and its competition, right? This is one of Warren Buffett's number one keys to investing as well. Fully understand a business, its operations before you invest into it. Why would you invest in a business that you don't understand how they make money, the different segments of the business, their competition, right? The future outlook five, 10 years away from now, you know, why would you invest in a business like that? You have to understand the moat of that business, right? How is that business going to fend off competition? Is it a very difficult industry sector? Is it a very difficult business to get into? If it is, that might mean that that particular business has a strong moat, right? Does it have, you know, a patent? Does it have, you know, a very strong brand like Apple is a company that has a very strong moat, the infrastructure the business is built on, right? The competitive advantage Apple, for example, their competitive advantage is the loyalty to that brand, right? People, they're willing to spend literally $1,500 on an iPhone, when there are phones on the market that are literally $500, just because Apple has built that loyalty, that brand that people are literally willing to pay three times the price for a product, for a product that where there's products that are way less in terms of value on the market, people are willing to spend more for the particular brand, right? And management is something huge as well. You need to understand the CEO, the CFO, the marketing officers, right? All these different positions that are leading the company that you're looking to invest in, right? Without a, you know, without a, how can I put this, without a very competent executive team, a business can very well go off the rails and become bankrupt, right? So it's very important to understand who's running the business, right? Facebook as Mark Zuckerberg, he has his head on clear, right? Most people think that I personally think that's why I'm invested in Facebook. You know, Elon Musk is the CEO of Tesla, right? Many people don't agree with Elon Musk, but I think he's a huge visionary. And I think he's a very good fit CEO for that company, for that company to get where it needs to be in the next five, 10 years to please shareholders, right? Which is why I'm invested in a very small position in Tesla stocks. So you have to understand these different, really just these different things that are comprising a business before you do invest into the stock of that business, right? Again, investing in the stock market, people think you invest in stocks, but you have to view it a bit differently, right? You're investing in the business, right? This is something that a bunch of people get confused. You invest in the business, not the stock, right? Keep that in mind. So the third key to successful stock market investing is defining your strategy and sticking to it, right? We all know at this point in time, there's a bunch of different investing methods, one of them being growth stock investing, right? You have value investing, you have dividend investing, right? Pick your strategy, whether it's one of these three or, you know, a combination of all of that, right? And stick to that and be focused to your strategy over the long run. And if you're implementing all of these different keys and a bunch of research and a bunch of analysis, you're going to be successful over time, right? Let's talk about growth investing and the difference between these so you can get an understanding. So growth investing is think of like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google, PayPal, Visa, right? These are all companies that are growing year over year and they don't really prioritize, except for maybe Apple because they are paying a dividend, but most growth companies out there, they're not prioritizing dividends, right? They're putting more money into the research and development, investing into the company, hiring new people, right? Expanding their product line so they can grow the business rather than paying some of their earnings in a form of dividends, right? So this is one form of investing in a certain business that it's growing year over year very quickly, right? Profits are exploding, earnings per share are exploding. All of those different things are doing well, right? On the flip side, you have value investing and dividend investing where you're investing in a company that's not necessarily growing as quick as these growth companies, but they're more stable. That's the thing, right? Think of Procter and Gamble, McDonald's, right? Johnson and Johnson. Think of these companies. These companies by no means are they small companies, right? They're massive, massive companies, but they're just not recording extreme year over year revenue growth, profit growth. They're simply in the maturity phase of their business where they're kind of growing very minimally over the years, but they can pay a fat dividend every single quarter, right? And these dividends are growing for the most part year over year, where you as a shareholder can live off of this as income, right? That's a very big thing for people that are starting off value and dividend investing from a young age. They can literally build this massive snowball by reinvesting the dividend. So over time, you're going to have more and more dividend income and you can just live off of that, right? And if you're younger and you have other income sources, you can simply reinvest the dividend. So those are the three keys, guys, right? With the third key, it's very key to be just be consistent and focused. The second key is to fully understand the business and its competition from the moat, the competitive advantage, the management, the first key, just doing a quick little rundown here, understand how to read financial statements from the balance sheet, the income statement, the statement of cash flows, understand all these different things. And these are going to help you in becoming a successful investor. So I hope you guys enjoyed this video. If you did, feel free to drop a like, leave a comment, subscribe to the channel. If you're new, if you enjoy the content and you watch the content all the way through, I really, really do appreciate you more than you ever know. I'll catch you all in the next video. Thanks again for watching. Peace out.