It’s no secret that the pandemic brought a wave of new investors eager to give a shot at playing the market.
In fact, a Charles Schwab study found that 15% of all current U.S. stock market investors got their start in 2020 — giving rise to what Schwab calls the “Investor Generation.”
The pandemic prompted the perfect timing to begin investing: stocks became cheaper to buy as the market dipped, savings account interest rates got slashed in half and many young consumers were stranded at home with nothing much else to do.
Plus, now that many brokerage firms now offer accounts with no minimums and zero-commission trading, just about anyone can start investing, even with a small amount of money.
To help guide this new generation of investors, as well as their more experienced counterparts, Select spoke with a handful of certified financial planners about what to watch out for.
Here are the seven biggest investing mistakes they say are the most common.