Stock-market Success

with your investments in the face of continued uncertainty surrounding the ongoing effects of the pandemic?

The short answer is to remember that the stock market is forward-looking, and you should remain disciplined, diversified, and focused on quality and income. This logic applies pre-pandemic, postpandemic, and right now.

1. Stay Disciplined. When headlines are predicting challenging times ahead and/or stocks are selling off, people think they need to do something, anything. Stay disciplined in your approach and avoid the temptation to try to time the market. As famed investor, Peter Lynch, pointed out, “Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections, or trying to anticipate corrections, than has been lost in corrections themselves.”

2. Be Diversified. A diversified portfolio that is spread across the different sectors that make up the stock market – technology, health care, industrials, utilities, to name a few – can help you navigate through different market environments. Another important aspect of diversification is not putting all your eggs in one or a few companies – a good rule of thumb is to have not more than 5% of your portfolio in any individual stock.

3. Focus on Quality and Income. A diversified portfolio of high quality, dividend-paying equities, can enable you to weather volatility while also providing income to fund your spending needs. High-quality companies tend to have strong balance sheets and prolonged track records of earnings growth and often pay a healthy and growing dividend.

Regardless of current headlines, the vaccine rollout, or whatever tumultuous events may be occurring, doing these three things should help you maintain a sense of “calm amidst the storm,” so to speak, so you can continue making progress towards achieving your long-term financial goals.

Mick Kuehn is a Senior Equity Analyst for Verity Investment Partners.

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ECOMMERCE

FOR ENTREPRENEURS

OPTIONS TO START SELLING PRODUCTS ONLINE

BY ANITA CAMPBELL

The U.S. ecommerce market brought in more than $504 billion in revenue in 2018. And it’s expected to grow to more than $735 billion by 2023.

With so much potential in the market, it’s the perfect time for entrepreneurs to get started selling products online. Today’s sellers have a ton of options to make this happen. Here are five of the most popular.

YOUR OWN ECOMMERCE STORE

Building an ecommerce store from scratch is the most traditional option. With this option, you need to find your own website hosting and domain. Then you need to design the layout, add products and fill it with content. You can hire a designer or developer to do some of this for you.

You’ll have your own site that you can control every aspect of. You have the freedom to add new products, change content and fiddle with the back-end functionality.

HOSTED ECOMMERCE PLATFORMS

Hosted ecommerce platforms differ from dedicated ecommerce sites because most of the work that goes into creating the site is done for you. Shopify, BigCommerce and Big Cartel are examples. They allow you to quickly set up a storefront from a select set of options. Often you can choose from themes and templates. Some even offer further customization options. They also give you instructions for adding products, photos and other content.

To your customers, this might appear like an ecommerce site that you set up on your own. But if you have specific design or back-end preferences, they might not be available. Additionally, this type of site is often easier or less expensive to get up and running. They usually charge monthly fees that may exceed basic hosting fees over time.

MARKETPLACE SITES

Marketplace sites include things like Etsy, eBay and Amazon, where small businesses can sell their products alongside other sellers. On the back end, these work like hosted ecommerce platforms. But there are usually fewer options for customization. Most of these sites also charge a listing fee or take a percentage of each sale.