Self Help

A strong company in a growing industry is a common recipe for success.

A company’s balance sheet gives you a financial snapshot of what the company looks like in terms of the following equation: Assets - liabilities = net worth.

You should never automatically invest just because you get a hot tip from someone. Good investment selection means looking at several sources before you decide on a stock.

To judge the financial strength of a company, ask yourself the following questions:

Should you invest in real estate? Yes, but at the right time and in the right place.

When a company offers its stock to the public, it must make the offer by issuing a publication called a prospectus.

The daily Dow Jones Industrial Average is a simple convenient stock market average to study. The S&P 500 can also be used; however, it is no more reliable for determining trend or direction, even though it is a broader, more modern and representative average consisting of 500 companies.

The winning investor should understand how a normal business cycle unfolds and the duration of these periods, paying particular attention to recent cycles.

Pick a diversified domestic growth fund that performed in the top quartile of all mutual funds over the last three to five years.

The “Short-and-abort” tactic towards stocks works on the same premise as the “pump-and-dump.” The difference is that instead of playing on greed emotion, the con works on the fear emotion.

Going short (also called shorting a stock, selling short, or doing a short sale) on a stock is a common technique for profiting from a stock price decline.

Although it may sound unfamiliar or complicated, a pooled-assets investment club is nothing more than what you probably already think an investment club is.

It’s hard to read about any kind of financial topic these days without stumbling across references to investment clubs.

A major type of investment is those in which you lend your money. No matter what type of bank account you place your money in, you are lending your money to the bank.

If you own a portfolio of equities, you must learn to sell your worst performing stocks first and keep your best acting investments a little longer.

One very intelligent rule when it comes to investing is to always keep the investment problem as simple as possible.

Ever thought about owning and renting out a small office building or strip mall?

Investors with less than $10,000: If you have $10,000 or less to allocate to stocks, you may want to consider a mutual fund rather than individual stocks because that sum of money may not be enough to properly diversify.

Are you worried that your money fund does not have FDIC insurance?

If you sincerely want to do well investing in the stock market or be more accurate in predicting what the American economy is likely to do, then you must be able to correctly interpret the direction of the daily general market averages.

You can invest in a great company and still see its stock go nowhere.

A bond is similar to a certificate of deposit (CD).

If you’re going to invest in real estate, you can do tons of research to decide where and what to buy.

Company-sponsored 401 (k) plans (named after the section in the tax code that allows them) are widely used and are very popular.

It takes big demand to move supply up, and the largest source of demand for stocks is by far the institutional buyer.

How much risk is appropriate for you, and how do you handle it?

Diversification is a strategy for reducing risk by spreading your money across different investments.

A stock is considered a growth stock when it’s growing faster and higher than stocks of other companies with similar sales and earnings figures.

8 guidelines to follow when purchasing new stock.

A day order (a time-related order) is an order to buy a stock that expires at the end of that particular trading day.

Why you should keep your savings in money market mutual funds.