Stocks & Mutual Funds Information
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.
Shorting Stocks - The Basics, Part II of II
After the publication of the first part of this two part series, I had a few questions asking if shorting stocks is legal and I will quickly reply with a big YES. Some people believe that shorting shares of American companies is not patriotic or does not seem like the right thing to do.
Trading as a Business
What can I expect to make my first year of trading?We get questions like this one quite often. We find that most aspiring traders don't have a clue as to what to expect from the market.
Bollinger Bands Strategies
The Bollinger Band theory is designed to depict the volatility of a stock. It is quite simple, being composed of a simple moving average, and its upper and lower "bands" that are 2 standard deviations away.
Peer Groups
Whenever I see mutual fund comparisons in the trade publications and in the financial section of the newspaper they almost always mention a specific fund and tell you how good it is in relation to its peer group. A peer group is a specialized sector of mutual funds that all invest in about the same type of stocks or areas of the world or size of companies or some such categorization.
Why This Bear?
People are constantly asking me why is the stock market going down. What is causing this bear market? It is relatively simple so don't ask an economist.
Kick The Tires
Before you buy another car you walk around the lot, kick the tires, slam the doors and look at the mileage indicator. That's an odometer.
How To Buy And Hold
One of the most believed bits of conventional wisdom from Wall Street is to Buy and Hold. Any stock or mutual fund should be put away for eternity and never sold.
Rebalance And Diversify
The stock market has not been very kind to your investments lately. Your broker knows this so you may have received a call from him suggesting it is time to 'rebalance and diversify' your portfolio.
Social Insecurity
Just about everything you have been told about Social Security is an obfuscation. That is a big word for convoluted truth or lie.
Risk Control
Everything you invest in has risk so you want to do your research before you put your money on the line.For example, when McDonald's opens a new restaurant (please, don't call it a hamburger joint) they will investigate as many of the relevant facts as possible.
Protect Your 401K
Checked your 401K lately? Going back to about a year ago many of these retirement accounts have shrunk by 30%, some even more. What Happened?You have been putting money in for years and your employer may have been contributing to your plan also.
One Way Street
Ever turn down a street, get half way and suddenly realize it is one way and you are going the wrong way? Is that the way you feel when you look at your stock brokerage statement?In either case don't panic. You can get out of that one way street by carefully backing out.
Top 25 Growth Funds
On Monday, November 25, 2000 Investor's Business Daily listed on page B1 the Top 25 Growth Mutual Funds for the last 36 months along with their performance for the year 2000 to date. Only four showed a profit this year of 21% and the other three had increases of 12%, 5%, and 5%.
How To Pick A Mutual Fund
Mutual funds by definition are a mixed bag of stocks, bonds and a little cash. Their price per share is the NAV, Net Asset Value of the total amount of money in the mutual fund divided by the number of shares.
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Patterns
The Law of Chaos is the theory of random unpredictable action applied to the cosmos, mathematics, mechanics, almost everything. Those who believe it will definitely think the stock market is in chaotic state at this time.
Discipline
One of the great "secrets" of successful people is discipline and it doesn't make any difference whether it is manufacturing, processing, servicing or investing in the stock market.Before you can have that discipline you must have a successful plan and stick with it.
Box Of Chocolates
Ever have one of those sample boxes of candy? Each little piece is beautifully wrapped in colorful foil or decorated with an interesting design. Taste just one.
The Skinny on Mutual Fund Investing
Mutual fund investing is a lot like Thai cooking. Everyone has heard of it, most know a little something about it, but very few actually know how to do it and do it well.
Laws and Efficiencies and Theories of Diminishing Returns
The basis of diminishing return discussions surround such simple notions; that when you have a very fast aircraft, you also have coefficients of drag issues. When you are building a quarter mile car and want to go faster you must realize that for every tenth of a second you need to lose 100 lbs.
What Our Investment Advisor Wont Say Off The Bat
Most advisors will tell you they can beat the market. They may even point to years in which they did.
Buy Low - Sell High
Now where have I heard that before? I know. It was my broker.
The Stock Market - Part 1: Believe It Or Not, Its Always Been Your Best Friend And Always Will Be
Regardless of the fact that the world's stock markets have shown absolutely no growth between the date of writing this article (Late April 2005) and the late 1990s, they should still be looked at with more than just a sideways glance.Speak gently to them, speak well of them to your friends, learn to trust them, cuddle up close and get to know them - and they will reward you in a way that the banks, mutual funds (Unit Trusts in the UK), pension funds and insurance companies never can or will.
Two for the Money
Look back over the years and try to remember how many different stocks and mutual funds you have owned. Suppose you had owned only 2 different equities during that entire time.
Why Is The Macedonian Stock Exchange Unsuccessful?
The Macedonian Stock Exchange (MSE) is not operating successfully. True, some of the parameters which we use to measure the success of a stock exchange have lately improved in the MSE.
Stock Market Investments
If there is one term over-used when talking about making investments in the stock market I would think that term would be: buy low, sell high.Buy low? Sell high? How low is low and how high is high? I like the term buy low, sell dear, much better! But better still are the terms buy and hold, and dollar-cost-averaging (buying the same stock at different prices through the years).
My Stock - Right or Wrong
We all know the expression, "My country, right or wrong", but have you ever thought about the stocks or mutual fund you own and said to yourself, "My stock - right or wrong" and held on to your position even as you saw your hard-earned money disappearing?This is the Buy N Hold strategy and, in case you haven't noticed, lost from 40% to 60% and more of investors' money from 2000 to 2003. Fortunately, for the past year stock markets around the world have gone up and folks have recovered about 25% to 30% from those low numbers.
The Great Stock Market Secret
When the stock market is going up and all your stocks and mutual funds are making money you feel like a genius. It is too bad that some folks don't remember what happened in 2000.
9 Deadly Trading Mistakes!
The following are a list of nine things you want to avoid at all costs. Anyone of them can literally destroy your financial dreams and goals!1.
Kick The Tires
Before you buy another car you walk around the lot, kick the tires, slam the doors and look at the mileage indicator. That's an odometer.
Leverage - Margin Debt
What is leverage?Here is a definition of leverage from an online dictionary "leverage - The use of credit or borrowed funds to improve one's speculative capacity and increase the rate of return from an investment, as in buying securities on margin."Essentially, the core idea of leverage is that investors can use less money to control bigger amount of investment so that investors can make more money when the price movement is in investors' favor.
Basics of Stock Market
Financial markets provide their participants with the most favorable conditions for purchase/sale of financial instruments they have inside. Their major functions are: guaranteeing liquidity, forming assets prices within establishing proposition and demand and decreasing of operational expenses, incurred by the participants of the market.
Long Term Financial Vehicles
Investing in long-term financial vehicles give you the most gains but it also puts your funds at greater risk. There is much truth to the saying, "there is no gain if there is no risk".
Selling
The stock market has been going up for more than 7 months and many investors who held on through the big crash of 2000 are seeing their portfolios get back some of what had disappeared. Is now the time to sell those equities that are 'even' with what you paid for them? No.
The Value of Stocks of a Company
The debate rages all over Eastern and Central Europe, in countries in transition as well as in Western Europe. It raged in Britain during the 80s: Is privatization really the robbery in disguise of state assets by a select few, cronies of the political regime? Margaret Thatcher was accuse of it - and so was the Agency of Transformation in the Republic of Macedonia.