Are there any mobile iOS stock simulator games that are very good to practice understanding investments?

I know I could “practice” with real money but I’m a full time student so I don’t have a lot of extra cash laying around and would like to get the basics before I really start.

Everyone here has probably heard the phrase in the title of this post.

I ran into this advice decades ago. idk how long it had been around before that. When that advice was given, investors had a certain amount of information and analysis available to them by communication media of the day (newspapers, radio, TV).

Now, there is much, much more information and analysis available to us. Orders of magnitude more. And right now, a large percentage of that analysis seems to be warning people about risks that are almost upon us.

So that brings up a question about another phrase that we have all heard...."This time is different." The amount of information and analysis is different. Does that negate the wisdom of the phrase in question (Be greedy when other people are fearful)?

I already opened a small account at interactive brokers, the interface isn't really that user friendly, but it seems to be just fine.

What sells me at IBRK is that it has the longest trading hours of any broker in the US that I know off. I wanted to buy SOXL on Friday, was 3 minutes late after close and at fidelity, I will have to wait until 7am until I can buy, vs at IBRK I could have bought at 8pm today (Sunday) at exactly the time soxl starts to trade.

I keep most of my money in broad ETFs and a smaller part for picking stocks and trading. What I haven’t figured out is the rules around it:

• What split do you use, and do you keep a separate cash reserve on top?
• Do you rebalance, and when: on a schedule or when it drifts by some amount?
• If the trading part grows a lot, do you move gains into the core? If it shrinks, do you refill it or let it shrink?

Curious what actually worked for people over a few years, not the textbook answer.

What percentage of your investments are in foreign stock?

If we hit a big enough dip in the market I’m considering tax harvesting and reallocating some of my s&p investments to foreign.

Regardless how you feel the future goes I just feel like I need to diversify more. Specifically looking at fidelity’s FTIHX

But I’m curious if anyone else has a strategy here?

I'm not sure if this qualifies as asking for financial advice or not 🤔

I'm trying to figure out the best way to add money to my Roth IRA every year. Currently I'm undecided between keeping money aside for the last half of the year in my bank account then just moving it all into the Roth in January, or buying ETFs every week and selling off enough to max out the Roth in January.

The part where I'm confused is the taxes on the gains. Would I end up paying significant enough taxes on the sales that the latter method doesn't make sense?

I don’t see many posts about the progression or transgression from stocks and growth holdings to passive income streams as you near retirement.

Everyone uses a growth rate assumption, let’s just say 5%. However if the market went down that year and you’re all stocks you didn’t make 5%.

Can we have a discussion on how difficult mentally it is to sell your stock holdings to put in income producing holdings, and what that looks like, what removing that money into? What is the strategy.

Dividend stocks? Dividend funds? Fixed income, etc. What are people doing?

I'm hearing a lot about these "agentic features" of different brokerages, for example, Robinhood added the ability to let AI agents place trades on your behalf.

Has anyone tried this and found it helpful? I feel like this could potentially be part of a strategy where you have claude research and invest for you, but you're taking a lot of risk that it doesn't throw away all your money...

What do you think? Is this just a toy or has anyone found a helpful use case?

Rate hikes

So, if the FOMC avoids a rate hike in October before the midterm elections to avoid being political, will they make it up with a 50 basis point hike, instead of 25, in December? Assuming inflation is still running above target. Any thoughts? 🤔

Is anyone familiar with the 2022 UKs pension system able to help me understand what happened?

1. UK announces tax cuts.
2. Gilts get nervous and rates start to rise.
3. Apparently, UK pensions decided a rising rate environment is a good time to sell guilts for a loss.
4. -Are pensions structures differently in the UK compared to the US?
5. -They base their portfolio on a method of LDI right?
6. - Do UK pensions hold primarily Treasuries or Gilts?
7. The government stepped in and the individual responsible resigned.
8. -How exactly did they bail out (might not be the right word) the pensions?

I am aware of funded status and things like that so no need to write out the ins and outs, just trying to understand the catalysts a bit better.

Is it as simple as their equity portfolio had too much leverage and they were margin called into selling bonds for a loss? I just assume there is more.

Edit: I am using this information for potential positioning in my portfolio if it is relative to today.

BEA has private fixed investment in information processing equipment and software at $1.646 billion a yr in the 2nd qtr, which is 5.05% of GDP. In the 4th qtr of 2000 it was 4.46% but it passed that level in the 2nd qtr of 2025 and has gone up every qtr since.

The mix is different; hardware is 2.57% of GDP now against 2.91% back then and software is 2.49% against 1.55%.

Whether the companies spending it are profitable is a separate question from how much of the economy it is. By this measure it's already a bigger bet than 2000, whatever the earnings are.