Explain that graph!
Sep 24, 2017
This week I had another email from a subscriber who I have been in touch with a couple of times. Prior emails focussed on how to make a start on investing. She was keen to give it a go but was agonising over the details which was stopping her, well, starting! But she got there in the end, dived in, bit the bullet and signed up with InvestNow. She chose them she said because “I prefer their interface, and their customer service is really really impressive”. Good on you for making a decision and a start I say.
Whenever you get anything new there is a tendency to refer to it often, whether it is a new item of clothing, cookbook (I’m loving Annabel Langbein’s latest!) or brand spanking new Index Funds. Like me, she checked on her new investment multiple times a day but as weeks turned into months she checks them far less often, now just taking a peek on a monthly basis.
Having overcome her first hurdle, the signup process, she has now encountered her second…
When she is checking up on her investment what the heck do the charts and graphs mean? To help her and others out I’ve taken a screenshot directly from the NZX. I picked Air New Zealand because they have had an interesting week, what with the main aviation fuel line being severed by an overzealous digger operator having a scratch around in the dirt on the 14th September. Only in New Zealand! The share price took a sharp dive when that happened and is a very good example to bring a graph to life. Peaks and troughs are triggered by events after all.
Below I explain the graph in more detail.
NZX website showing Air New Zealand.
So there you have it! I'm not going to lie to you here. I still don't understand Capitalisation properly, but my life has not suffered as a result! Just through going on NZX.com and taking a look at things on a relatively frequent basis I have developed a working understanding of what I need to know to get by. You may find your data on the site you go to listed in a different way to this, but they all have a similar theme and are all generally displaying the same information.
I hope you found this helpful!
