You can get by just fine without watching the market much at all. The stock market is made up of exchanges, like the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq. Stocks are listed on a specific exchange, which brings buyers and sellers together and acts as a market for the shares of those stocks.

Need to back up a bit? Read our explainer about the ins and outs of stocks. You place your stock trades through the broker, which then deals with the exchange on your behalf. The NYSE and the Nasdaq are open from 9: Eastern, with premarket and after-hours trading sessions also available, depending on your broker.

6 Stock Market Investing Tips & Guide for Beginners - Checklist

A market index tracks the performance of a group of stocks, which either represents the market as a whole or a specific sector of the market, like technology or retail companies. Investors use indexes to benchmark the performance of their own portfolios. You can also invest in an entire index through index funds and exchange-traded funds, which track a specific index or sector of the market.

Stock Market Basics: What Beginner Investors Should Know - NerdWallet

Read more about ETFs here. Younger investors may be familiar with the term bear market but unfamiliar with the experience: That makes it the second-longest bull run in history.

Bull markets are followed by bear markets, and vice versa, with both often signaling the start of larger economic patterns. In other words, a bull market typically means investors are confident, which indicates economic growth. A bear market shows investors are pulling back, indicating the economy may do so as well. The good news is that the average bull market far outlasts the average bear market, which is why over the long term you can grow your money by investing in stocks.

What you can avoid is the risk that comes from an undiversified portfolio. But building a diversified portfolio of individual stocks takes a lot of time, patience and research. The alternative is the aforementioned ETF or index fund.

The good news is you can combine individual stocks and funds in a single portfolio.

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