Investing questions, answered

The 3-5-7 rule is a risk guideline, not a return promise: risk no more than 3 percent of your account on a single position, keep your total risk across open positions under 5 percent, and aim for winners that are at least 7 percent larger than your losers. It is about surviving long enough to let good decisions compound.

Study after study finds that the large majority of active day traders lose money over time, and only a small minority are consistently profitable after costs. That is exactly why SteadyShares is built for patient, research-led investing rather than fast trading.

Honestly, for almost everyone this is unrealistic, and chasing it is how people lose money. The steadier path is to compound a diversified portfolio of quality businesses over years. Use fair-value estimates and a screener to find good companies, not quick wins.

For a long-term investor the answer is usually years, for as long as the business stays strong and reasonably priced. The useful question is not how long, but whether the original reason to own it still holds. SteadyShares shows quality, moat and fair-value estimates so you can judge that.

Most companies pay dividends quarterly, but some funds and real estate investment trusts pay monthly. Rather than chase a list, filter by dividend yield and read each stock's full payout history so you can see whether the income is durable.

A 13F is a quarterly filing in which large institutions disclose their United States stock holdings to the SEC. It is the closest thing to seeing what the smart money actually owns. SteadyShares tracks more than 100 legendary funds straight from these filings.

You compare a company's price to an estimate of what the business is intrinsically worth, and to its peers. SteadyShares ranks the market by a fair-value estimate and lets you screen for names trading below it, with a data-quality score so you know how much each estimate rests on.

It is an estimate of what a business is worth today based on the cash it is expected to produce, judged against its current price. SteadyShares shows a fair-value estimate and a margin of safety for every covered stock, with the assumptions you can change yourself in the Valuation Lab.

There is no single good number: a fast grower can deserve a high price-to-earnings ratio and a shrinking business a low one. What matters is the P/E against the company's own growth and its peers. A low P/E on a declining business is a value trap, not a bargain.

A moat is a durable advantage that protects a company's profits from competitors: a strong brand, network effects, high switching costs, or a cost edge. Wider moats tend to keep returns high for longer, which is why SteadyShares scores and explains each company's moat.

Start with a low-cost, diversified base, add a fixed amount on a schedule, and let time and compounding do the heavy lifting. The size of your first cheque matters far less than starting early and not interrupting the compounding.

Dollar cost averaging means investing a fixed amount at a regular interval regardless of price, so you buy more when prices are low and less when they are high. It removes the impossible job of timing the market and keeps emotion out of the decision.

For most people a low-cost index ETF is the sensible core, because it is instantly diversified and hard to beat. Individual stocks can add return and conviction, but they need research. Many investors hold an index base and a smaller set of hand-picked names.

Dividend yield is the annual dividend divided by the share price, shown as a percent. A very high yield can be a warning that the market expects a cut, so weigh the yield against how well earnings and cash flow cover it.

Market cap is the share price times the number of shares, so it is what the market says the whole company is worth. It is the honest measure of size, unlike the share price alone, which means nothing without the share count.

Value stocks trade cheaply relative to profits or assets, often in steadier industries; growth stocks command higher prices for faster expected expansion. Neither always wins. The best approach is to buy growth at a reasonable price rather than at any price.

A common guideline is to keep any single position small enough that being wrong will not sink you, often well under 10 percent for individual stocks. Concentration builds wealth and destroys it, so size positions to survive the ones you get wrong.

Members of the United States Congress must disclose their trades, and those filings are public. SteadyShares collects them so you can see, by member and by ticker, what politicians have been buying and selling and when they disclosed it.

Large funds reveal their United States stock positions every quarter in an SEC filing called a 13F. SteadyShares reads these filings for more than 100 well-known investors so you can track what they own, what they added, and what they sold.

AI is genuinely useful for sifting thousands of companies, summarising filings, and flagging quality and value, but it cannot predict prices and should never be treated as a crystal ball. SteadyShares uses it to do the reading and ranking, then shows you the reasoning so you decide.

An AI stock screener filters the market by the metrics you care about and adds a layer of judgement on top: ranking by quality, moat and fair value, and explaining each result in plain English rather than leaving you with a raw table.

Nobody can reliably call the top or bottom, and waiting for the perfect moment usually costs more than it saves. For a long-term investor the best time is a regular schedule through good markets and bad, judged against the rate and volatility backdrop rather than a hunch.

Spread your money across companies, sectors and regions so that no single failure can undo you, and hold assets that do not all move together. Diversification will not maximise a good year, but it is what keeps a bad one from being permanent.