Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch abucket of? money. Money? They are continuingto fill their bucket with stocks without anyconsideration to the value of these equities. They are not worried at all as they are buying"safe" mutual funds. Everyone knows mutual funds are safe. Jackand Jill know they don't know how to pick goodstocks so they leave that to the fund manager. He is an expert. When you look at the long term record of 99%of the mutual funds you will see that expertise hasbeen sadly lacking....

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Ever jumped out of an airplane? It's OK ifyou have on a parachute. Pretty dumb if you don't. Every buy any stocks, mutual funds or ExchangeTraded Funds? It's OK if you know how much youare willing to risk. Pretty dumb if you don't. Parachute investing is buying an equity with a parachute so you won't risk all your moneyor, better yet, give back the profit you have madeas the stock or fund went up and then goes down. If you bought that hummer at $12 per share andduring the past couple of years seen it go up to$52 you don't want to give back that niceprofit, do you?...

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One of the things people are always asking me is how can I find a good stock. The answer I give does not please them. I say, "You are not qualified to pick stock. You don't know how so don't try. Put your money in a no-load mutual fund that is going up". The next cry is, "I don't want to buy mutual funds. What do I do?"OK, so I'll tell you. It is easy. You will have to do less than an hour of work. None of that Wall Street mythology about research which is all horse hockey. The way Wall Street does research is worthless....

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One of the greatest challenges of investing in stocks is developing a "sell discipline". Some of the most adept investors struggle with the decision of when to sell. First, recognize that there are no absolute formulas to tell us to sell at precisely the right time. Instead, we'll need to consider a bundle of factors such as the investment's characteristics, the broad economy, and your own needs, with an eye to market trends. The answer will come from some combination of these hard-to-quantify characteristics....

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It has fallen upon the consumer to make our economy strong. All the politicians, economists and talking heads on TV are telling him (that's you and me) to get out there and spend your money. Buy that new car, build a new house and fly off to some remote place for an expensive vacation. Where did the idea that consumer borrowing is a recipe for prosperity? As I recall when I was a kid my Dad told me to work hard, save my money and invest wisely. That still seems like a good idea. Where have I gone wrong to want to live within my means and save some of what I earn?...

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A colleague of mine just returned from a scuba diving trip inCozumel, which just happens to be one of my favorite places todive. Anyway, she was telling me about an unexpected difficultyshe encountered while swimming around the corral reef down about85 feet. It wasn't anything serious but her story reminded me ofsomething my scuba instructor used to say over and over again."Plan your dive, and dive your plan". When you're down about 90 or 100 feet the nitrogen acts on yourbody in a way that's not too dissimilar to having one drymartini on an empty stomach....

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It is finally catching up with them. The brokerage companies I mean. For years they have been feeding bad food to their flock and now the flock is rebelling. The customer has been low man on the totem pole for too long. That food has been the disinformation that has caused customers to lose large sums of money. Last year there were 33,000 brokerage company recommendations for thousands of stocks. Things like Strong Buy, Buy, Long Term Buy, Outperform, Underperform, Neutral, and Hold. The one word that was missing was Sell....

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For weeks, no, months we have been bombarded with nothing but negative news about the economy in general and thousands of individual companies. The stock market has dropped thousands of points and more than $8 trillion in paper assets have disappeared. Note I said paper assets because until you turn it into spendable money these numbers are but a figure on a piece of paper. Sure that doesn't make you feel any better when you bought Lucent at $80 and have seen it go to 80 cents. You could have protected you profits or reduced your loss if you have placed an open stop-loss order with your broker....

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How do you make money without picking tops and bottoms? I am glad you asked... Successful trading is similar to a successful business. You see, every successful business has a business plan so do successful traders. The astute reader knows that, successful traders have a systematic way they approach the market. The definition of a trading system is a trader's business plan; it defines your approach to trading... 1. A properly constructed trading system will leave no room for human judgment 2....

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You have heard about a particular mutualfund from a friend, saw it advertised on TV or readabout it in some publication thought it would bea good buy. Next you call your broker to get hisadvice before you buy because he is an expertand is there to help you make money. "Hello, Billy Sol (see Billy Sol Estes onGoogle), this is Joe Mushroom and I want to buysome XYZ mutual fund. What do you think?" "Joe, I was just thinking about you and wasgoing to call you, but first let me look up XYZfor you....

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I am taking the time to help others learn the basics in evaluating stocks for investment using both fundamental and technical analysis. Both tools are equally important in making serious decisions with your hard earned CASH! Start your search by looking for stocks with superior fundamentals. After fundamentals are established, look to see if this particular stock is in good company, by this I mean a strong industry group - similar stocks, historically move in the same direction (this is fact not opinion)....

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