Equity investment

A stock trader or equity trader or share trader is a person or company involved in trading equity securities. Stock traders may be an agent, hedger, arbitrageur, speculator, or investor. A stock investor is an individual or company who puts money to use by the purchase of equity securities, offering potential profitable returns, as interest, income, or appreciation in value (capital gains). This buy-and-hold long term strategy is passive in nature, as opposed to speculation, which is typically active in nature. Many stock speculators will trade bonds (and possibly other financial assets) as well. Stock speculation is a risky and complex occupation because the direction of the markets are generally unpredictable and lack transparency, also financial regulators are sometimes unable to adequately detect, prevent and remediate irregularities committed by malicious listed companies or other financial market participants.

Stock speculators are often ambiguously categorized as stock traders, if trading in that capacity, as it sounds more acceptable to the general public. Individuals or firms trading equity () on the as their principal capacity are often called stock traders. Stock speculators usually try to profit from short-term price volatility with trades lasting anywhere from several seconds to several weeks.

The stock speculator is usually a professional. Persons can call themselves full or part-time stock traders/investors while maintaining other professions. When a stock speculator/investor has clients, and acts as a money manager or adviser with the intention of adding value to their clients finances, he is also called a financial advisor or manager. In this case, the financial manager could be an independent professional or a large bank corporation employee. This may include managers dealing with investment funds, hedge funds, mutual funds, and pension funds, or other professionals in venture capital, equity investment, fund management, and wealth management. These organized investors, are sometimes referred to as institutional investors. Several different types of stock trading strategies or approaches exist including day trading, trend following, market making, scalping (trading), momentum trading, trading the news, and arbitrage.

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