Stocks & Mutual Funds Articles

It depends on your level of understanding of the market and the amount of money you have. If you a sophisticated investor with a substantial amount invested you are probably already receiving more than one. If you have very little market savvy it wil...

What! Me worry? Many of you remember the cover of MAD magazine. It was one of my favorites. Alfred's only worry was about his front tooth. You and I have other problems. The one big problem we all have is enough income to support our life style. Thos...

Several times each month I am solicited by various market touts who have a newsletter service, faxes or emails they are willing to send me to make me rich. That sure is nice of them. The first thing that pops into my head is if this system is so good...

Someday you may want to retire and continue to live in the life style to which you have become accustomed. According to conventional wisdom you will need less money because you will have fewer expenses than when you had to go to the office every day....

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 disappeare...

Every day I hear someone on CNBC proclaim that "this is the bottom" and you should get in there and buy all those "bargains". "The valuations of the DOW stocks are a steal." The low of DOW 8,000 immediately after September 11 was "the low" and the ma...

Every Wall Street analyst, financial planner and broker will tell you that the right way to pick a mutual fund is find a good money manager of a fund that has a long time record. Yes, I believe that too, but it is amazing that when you go back in tim...

Congress recently passed another new law that is supposed to outlaw financial crime. Corporate officers will be sent to jail for "cooking the books" as it is called. Among other things it is taking the stockholders money and paying themselves huge bo...

Quick, look out the window. It's raining. No, the sun's out. No, it's cloudy. Wait a second, it is changing again, but I can't tell what it is going to do. Kinds like the stock market. Up one day, down the next, then goes sideways. That stock I bough...

There is no question that the stock market is being affected by war jitters. When it looks like peace we have a strong rally. When it looks like shooting will begin momentarily the market takes a dump. What should you do with your stock, mutual funds...

As I have said many times before in this column it really doesn't make any difference what you buy - stocks, funds or indexes - it takes smarts to know when to sell. Direction of the general market is more important than selection of any equity. Ever...

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall and all the King's horsemen could not put Humpty Dumpty back together again. The Stock Market has had a great fall and all the brokers, CEOs, analysts and politicians have not been able to get it back up again. Oh, it w...

Never lose money in the stock market again. Yeah, I know. Don't buy any stock, but that is not what I meant. There is a clear and easy way to protect your capital - what you have now and what you might decide to buy in the future. And don't count on ...

During our travel down life's path we come to many places where the trail divides and we must make a decision. Some involve psychological (emotional) choices - marriage, divorce, leaving home, career changes, etc. Others are monetary - buying a new c...

Well, not really. What I mean is I don't mind losing a small amount when I have to sell a stock or mutual fund that is going down or taking away the profit I have made. During this past 3 years I have made money each year because I was not afraid to ...

I constantly hear the talking heads on CNBC-TV, the radio and other places talking about THE market. Of course, they mean the stock market which actually now is world wide and no longer just concentrated in New York. To every New Yorker New York is t...

I love roller coasters. The steeper the better. High and fast and curvy. Yahoo! Let's go again. But to get to the drop off point you have a slow grind up. Kinda reminds me of the stock market for the past 3 years. From 1982 to 2000 it was 18 years of...

Forget making a profit; instead focus on the income provided from your stock portfolio. That's right! Forget making a profit. The burden is now lifted - no more pressure on making a buck in the stock market. (Instead of trying to bend the spoon, ...

I cringe every time I hear a novice investor tell me that they only purchase low priced stocks because they offer higher potential gains. A common phase I hear is "I like to buy $1 and $2 stocks because they can double easily and I will make a 100% ...

The stock market is very unstable at this time going up and down while interest rates are so low you want to be a borrower and not a lender. Would you like some suggestions on how can you get the most out of low interest rates while being assured you...

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 margi...

The bear market that showed up at the end of 2000 has every brokerage house-as well as the entire mutual fund industry-scrambling to find creative ways to boost both their image and bottom line. Unfortunately, this is often at the investors' expense....

The Bollinger Band is the closest thing to 'The Holy Grail' of technical analysis there is. Especially for large cap stock traders, it just cannot be beat for analyzing charts. Having said that however, there is probably no other technical indicato...

This is an excellent question, if fact, it's the toughest question that I face with every stock that I own. If I own a stock and it immediately goes down, this is the easiest decision I must make - SELL and sell fast. I know how to cut my losses and ...

The trading method you employ to approach the stock market can make a big difference in your results. Stock trading is a very competitive field and in order to succeed you need to FOCUS on a set of simple strategies that you can implement without hes...

Value investing is the act of investors selecting stocks based upon a perceived value rather than solely looking at pricing trends in the stock's history. In fact, value investing may seem to go against convention investment wisdom in many cases beca...

Day trading is all about making buy and sell decisions. When you make a trade either your going to lose money or your going to make money, and some other times you will break even. When you win some body else will lose and so forth, but that's NOT wh...

Pretend, for a moment, that you have a gut feeling the market will be falling. You think that oil, the hurricane, the economy, whatever, is going to ultimately bring down the market. Should you get out of the market entirely? Making a decision to "g...

The stock market rallied recently on anticipation of a pause in the monetary tightening cycle, when the FOMC meets Sep 20th, because of hurricane Katrina. However, the market is near major resistance, and it's uncertain if the FOMC will pause or tigh...

Day trading is all about making buy and sell decisions. When you make a trade either your going to lose money or your going to make money, and some other times you will break even. When you win some body else will lose and so forth, but that's NOT wh...