Attitude Is [Almost] Everything

 
I often play a little game with myself when I have to go shopping; to the post office or on other errands. Sometimes I will just go about my business and make little comment or eye contact with the person serving me. Other times I will smile and talk to the person. Ask them how they are. Even make a joke! The difference is incredible. And it is amazing what affect it has on both them and me. If I take the effort to engage the person in a conversation and make eye contact - almost without exception their face lights up, they smile and are friendly back to me....
 

Dividend Reinvestment Plans: Investing on Automatic Pilot

 
If you're like many investors who squander those small dividend checks from your stock portfolio, a Dividend Reinvestment Plan (DRP) might be just what you need. Just as its name implies, a Dividend Reinvestment Plan allows you to reinvest some or all of those dividends into more stock of the issuing company. Unlike purchases made through traditional means, partial or fractional shares, as well as whole shares, are available. Technically, there are two types of DRPs. The first type involves buying shares at the market through an outside trustee....
 

Mutual Funds are Dead

 
You may have wondered why your mutual funds have been going down for the past 2 years. The answer is very simple, but not one you will hear from Wall Street as they want you to send money. In order for stock mutual funds to go up you must have a bull market. Unfortunately, that bull ended 2 years ago and is probably not going to return for a long time. Yes, there will be short-term rallies that can last from weeks to months, but the downward spiral will continue. For the past 100 years the Price/Earnings ratio of the S&P500 index has a mean average of about 15....
 

Different Ways of Buying Stocks

 
Let's say you are interested in this one company. You read its annual report, like what you see and your calculation indicates that the stock is trading way below its fair value. You are excited. It is time to buy! Hang on for a second. There are several techniques of buying stocks out there. Some are better than the other. Let me explore several useful ones. Buy all at limit price. Assume that we have done our research and we want to invest $ 2000 to buy stock XYZ at $ 12/share. We can do this by setting a limit order of $ 12/share to buy 166 shares of XYZ....
 

Frog In The Pot

 
Currently the long term market trend is up so complacency reigns supreme. It is doing exactlythe same as in 2000. When 2002 ended we had asurplus of boiled frogs. A smart frog will notbe lulled to sleep and will have a plan to jumpout of the pot. A frog without a plan plans tobe frog soup. There are many ways for the frog to escape and there are many ways for investors to retaintheir profits or at least not lose their moneythe next time the market heads down. It will ifpast performance is any guide to futuresresults....
 

Shorting Stocks - The Basics, Part I of II

 
What does it mean to short a stock? This means that you borrow the stock from your broker to sell to a third party. The idea is to buy back the stock at a lower price, returning the shares to your broker while leaving the remaining cash in your account as a profit. Put another way, a short seller does not own the stock before they sell it. Instead, they borrow it from another investor who already owns it. At a later date, the short seller buys back the stock they shorted and returns the stock to close out the loan....
 

Seecrets on Investment: Tired of Making Huge Losses in the Stock Market - Part 2

 
Fundamental analysis. Fundamentals analysis says the best way to predict the future trends of a stock is to understand the financial figures of the underlying company. The fundamental analyst would calculate a theoretical value of the company using cash flow analysis, recent dividends and earnings, future dividends and earnings projections plus a host of other economic numbers. If the current stock price is lower than the calculated value, a trader who uses fundamental analysis would buy this stock....
 

Stocks: Understand What You Buy!

 
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action!"Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832) I don't really know how cars actually work. Not really! I know how to drive them, but if you asked me how they work, I would not really know how to definitely explain it. That small technical limitation on my part doesn't stop me from knowing whether XYZ Autos is a quality company or not. I don't understand the cars they make, but I do understand XYZ Autos. Moreover, that understanding is critical to making a decision about the value of their stock....
 

NASDAQ 800?

 
In November of 2000 when the NASDAQ was trading at 3000 I wrote in this column that the NASDAQ Index would fall to 1500 and I got lots of heat for saying it. Microsoft had fallen from $129 to $60 per share. You know where they are today. The talking heads on CNBC-TV and many of the radio stock experts are convinced we are headed back up as soon as this small "correction" is over - and they could be right, but I seem to remember their former predictions just before the major stock indexes went over the edge of Financial Niagara Falls....
 

What To Buy?

 
Now that you have some money burning a hole in your pocket and the stock market is going up you have decided to buy some stock or maybe a mutual fund, but you have the momentous decisions to what to buy. At this point you have three decisions to make besides which equity to buy: 1. How much to buy. 2. When to buy. 3. When to sell. Which of these is the most important decision? Let me tell you this as a professional trader. What to buy and when to buy are the two least important of these decisions....
 

How to Evaluate Load vs. No Load Mutual Funds

 
If you have been dealing with mutual funds for any length of time, you undoubtedly have faced the question of which is better: Load Funds or No Load Funds. If you are new to investing, "load" simply refers to the commission paid to the broker selling the fund. "No load" means there is no commission on the purchase or sale. Most discussions in the past have centered exclusively on performance comparisons. Even rating services like Morningstar have occasionally chimed in with their opinion. However, rather than focusing only on performance, there are some other issues I consider far more important: Who is selling load funds and why?...
 
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