Author: Steve Selengut

Stocks, bonds, index funds; averages, recessions, market rallies and corrections; mutual funds, technical analysis, financial statements; commissions, taxes, and discount brokers. Just how much do you know about investing, or perhaps a better question: is there any “know” in the investment vocabulary? So many terms, ideas, and strategies; so little time and money! Here’s a list of thirty mostly-true or mostly-false comments for you to kick around with your friends and fellow investment bloggers:

1. Every Properly Diversified Portfolio will have up to 5% of its market value in each of these areas: miscellaneous speculative opportunities, gold or other commodities, small cap stocks, and global index funds.

2. Financial Professionals are well trained in all aspects of investing, investment portfolio design, and management. Consequently, a significant portion of their compensation is tied directly to how well they help their clients develop high quality, properly diversified, and goal directed portfolios.

3. Buy-and-Hold continues to be the proper investment strategy for most individual investors, especially if automatic reinvestment of income is part of the package.

4. It’s a better Investment-Income Strategy to buy shorter duration corporate and municipal bonds (rather than higher yielding long-term debt) because the market value doesn’t fluctuate as much with anticipated changes in the direction of interest rates, and that is the most important concern with income investing.

5. If an investor can learn to control his own Greed and Fear, he will have a much better chance of investing successfully.

6. Asset Allocation is a strategy used by investors to move assets from weak market sectors to strong ones in order to improve the growth of the Investment Portfolio’s bottom line.

7. No Load Mutual Funds are particularly good for investors because the mutual fund company does not charge anything for its services.

8. In the long run, investing in the stock market will assure you of keeping up with Inflation.

9. The proper gauge of your total Investment Portfolio Performance is the change in market value over the course of a calendar year, compared with the change in one of the more respected stock market averages during the same period of time.

10. Quality, Diversification, and Income are considered by many investors to be the three basic principles of investing.

11. Mutual Funds have always been a safer route to long-term investment success than trying to create your own portfolio of individual securities.

12. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is comprised solely of investment grade companies, and generally gives a clear indication of what is going on in the stock market.

13. Smart Cash is an integral part of any asset allocation formula because it allows investors to time the market successfully. Professional market timers know precisely when to move into or out of cash in anticipation of the next major directional change in the market.

14. It is a well-known fact that there are certain Core Portfolio Securities that belong in all investment portfolios if long-term success is to be expected.

15. There is no such thing as a freebie on Wall Street.

16. Closed End Mutual Funds (CEFs) are not popular with Wall Street professionals because they are inherently more risky than normal mutual funds.

17. Packaged Investment Products are designed with a sincere concern for the financial well being of the average investor, and are good for everyone.

18. Zero Coupon Bonds are an important part of the fixed income portion of the investment portfolio, especially when retirement is contemplated within five years or so.

19. The second step in every stock purchase should be the establishment of a Stop Loss Order. Such an order assures you that your losses will be limited to a specific percentage of your purchase price.

20. The IGVSI tracks the market value of a small but elite group of New York Stock Exchange equities.

21. The Four Most Important Investment Ideas include: buying only high quality securities, diversifying properly, using discount brokers exclusively, and establishing reasonable profit-taking targets.

22. Profit Takers and Traders hurt the average investor.

23. Investment Grade Value Stocks will be the next red-hot market sector.

24. “Sell your losers and let your profits run” is the essence of sound Investment Management thinking.

25. The November Syndrome is the partial result of the interaction of Wall Street institutional window dressing and the Infernal Revenue Code.

26. It is important that you take your Tax Losses regularly, particularly if you have held the losing position for less than one year.

27. Annuities, particularly Variable Annuities, are perfect investments at retirement both for people of limited resources and for the wealthy.

28. Technical Analysts can predict the future movements of the economy, individual securities, and the stock market with a very high degree of accuracy.

29. Index funds will always beat the market, or market sector, that they are designed to track.

30. The keys to successful investing are Asset Allocation using only two investment buckets: Equity and Income, and the development of realistic expectations about their market value performance.

Author: I Henman

Posted by Janet Schlarbaum

Like so many others, I’m working hard to make my financial future as bright as possible. I save when ever possible, and invest smart when I have the money to do so. In my opinion I have a good portfolio built up, I’ve seen gains and small losses over the years, however I am not as far along as I had planned to be by this time. There are a couple of reasons for this, one is the fact that markets go up and down, there is nothing any of us can do about it, the second is the high percentage of tax that is charged on capital gains. I finally got tired of paying the government so much if any at all of my investment gains, so I decided to seek some offshore investment advice.

Anyone who’s been investing for a while has probably heard of individuals moving their funds to foreign markets to avoid capital gains tax. I always figured it was a fantastic idea, how ever I didn’t know the first thing about it. My first step was to talk to my local broker about the idea, of course since he is paid commissions on my account he just attempted to sell me on the idea of keeping my portfolio with him and his brokerage. I was going to have to look else where for the information I needed, so I fired up my favorite search engine and started doing some searches for offshore investment advice.

What I got back from my queries wasn’t easy to understand. While several sites appeared to offer legitimate business advice, others were clearly scams. While I didn’t know the first thing about investing offshore I also wasn’t about to just send large amounts of money to someone I didn’t know or ever talk to. I really needed to talk person to person with someone for some solid offshore investment advice. I really thought the best place to get it would be to find a brokerage that has been handling transactions for Americans to foreign markets over the years.

After I had put in a few hours reviewing multiple websites, I found a site that looked promising. It was a firm specializing in offshore investment advice. So I decided to call in person, I had been avoiding any site that didn’t display a phone number for fear it was a scam. I spoke with a broker at that firm, he was more then happy to hear out my current situation as well as my expectations for the future. After hearing my store he gave me some offshore investment advice that fit what I was looking for, needless to say once our conversation was over I had the confidence to go ahead with the necessary investments to make my dreams a reality offshore.

Via Janet Schlarbaum

By Patrick Pearce

With corporate greed and corruption now the order of the day at Wall Street, and Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) that are more eager to collect multi million dollars in bonus checks than to secure Investors and Shareholders interests and returns on their investments, one has to ask these valid questions especially after what we witnessed recently with Lehman Brothers, Merril Lynch, Bear Stearn, AIG, etc: Are we better off saving our hard earned money under our mattresses as our grand parents did many years ago? Who can we trust today with our money? What is the safest investment with minimal risks?

I think I have some of the answers to those questions. One of the best recession proof investments to get into is Prime Income Properties, namely, commercial developments along with Mobile Homes, Self Storage, Assisted Living, Retail Shopping Centers and Strip Malls, RV Park, 5 plus Units Apartment buildings, and lands. Commercial development is where you can accomplish wealth without a lot of money or credit. One of the best ways to deal with properties is to lease it, do not buy it! Then you get new management, fill vacancies, create lots of value and exercise option to buy cheap.

Land acquisition tops it all. As my late father once said, “lands do not rot, and it can withstand any hurricane, tornado, flood, etc.” The land will still be there. There are three (3) types of lands with respect to Zoning, namely: Agricultural, Commercial and Residential. Make sure you know what type of land you buy. You can change zoning by consulting with your local municipal agencies. The best way to profit from lands is to carve larger parcels into smaller parcels or lots. Then get plans approved and develop it.

The profit potential is great with respect to lands and commercial developments. The top 1 per cent deal on real estate investment today is to buy below market value. Get great terms and huge upside. You can find deals via the Internet, Brokers, letters, etc. Evaluate deals, structure and negotiate financing, market and sell the deal. Let me remind you that knowledge is not power. The utilization of knowledge is power. Or better yet, applied knowledge is power.

Let me conclude by saying that we are living in tough economic times and you should be very careful and cautious where you invest for your future. The economy is in crisis and chaos as the financial crisis escalates. The federal government of the United States is ready to take unprecedented action with a massive bailout of over 800 billion dollars that will cost the American tax payers in the long run. Henry Paulson, Treasury Secretary of the United States along with President Bush are trying to calm fears, but not until the SEC and federal government regulate these criminals who masquerade on Wall Street dressed in suits and ties, we have all reasons to fear where we invest. Invest wisely, save, save, save! No time to buy fancy cars, jewelry and clothes now, think of real property investment.

 By Terry Hart Platinum

Something all entrepreneurs understand is that their job is to manufacture profits. To many this worthy goal is the entirety of their responsibility. Of course, to do this every professional understands that profits come directly from devising solutions to peoples problems in the form of a product or service placed in an appropriate market.

The subject of securing venture investment from private investors who look for a little higher risk but higher return opportunity is often highly misunderstood. An entrepreneur is essentially an ideas wo/man and they essentially make money pitching ideas and making presentations to people with money to invest in these ideas. An entrepreneur will typically not invest in the project themselves and often never even join the appointed management of the project. They do however invest in the presentation of the pitch.

Selling a good idea is an industry all in its own right and it doesn’t matter what part of the economic cycle we are currently in, boom or bust, the demand for new fresh and innovative ideas is always present. Even more so in a downturn because that is when new things are created, because in a hot market the mature products and successful company’s dominate and there is less room for innovation than in a downturn where investors are seeking and searching for new blood and fresh directions to get their investment business ticking over again.

All you need is a good idea. From there you need to do a feasibility study to generate the convincing feedback from the potential market and also credible statistics from reputable organizations that support and back your assumptions about your potential market and hopefuly these together paint a confident picture about your product or service that will allow you to sell your project.

If you need money now, like I mean in the next hour, try what I did. I am making more money now than in my old business and you can too, read about Martin Thomas in the link below. When I joined I was skeptical for just ten seconds before I realized what this was. I was smiling from ear to ear and you will too.

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By Ajay Sahota

For those of you who are interested in how to invest stock, you must be prepared in several different ways to make yourself prone to good results and a lifetime of great income. We are going to speak about what typical things you need to cover when looking to invest. Everything in this article is important when looking at how to invest stock.

Your Debts

To begin with you need to look at your debts. Now of course most adults who are looking to invest are in possession of a home, which probably means you have a mortgage. Something important you must know when learning how to invest stock is that you need to look at other debts that you may have besides your mortgage.
The main reason behind this is because if you are just starting in learning how to invest stock, you probably will not be earning more from the investments you make than you are going to have to pay in interest charges that have built up from other credit, e.g. Credit cards and loans. The interest rates on typical credit cards are almost 15-20%, whilst a general store card can be anything up to 25% and even more in some cases. So while you are learning how to invest stock, do yourself a favour and get rid of these debts before you cause major problems to your finances.

Your Savings

On top of being able to pay off all that debt you may have, you must also be in possession of some emergency funds. Now when learning how to invest stock you will come across a major point raised by all professionals, your savings. You must have savings that are very easily accessible to you before you put in a huge investment. Remember the stock market is unpredictable, so you are never certain on what may happen with your money. That is exactly why your savings are so important. You may also need to consider saving more if you have children to look after or any others you may need to attend your care towards.
There is a general rule to follow when you observe your savings, and that is to calculate your savings by working out how much you would need to survive without any extra income for at least six months. Your savings need to be able to keep you going for this amount of time. This is vital to your learning of how to invest stock.

Your Goals

Now when you learn how to invest stock or yourself, you will find that nearly every single person has a different goal and achievement they are looking for out of their investment. This will be your next essential step, you must work out what you want from your money. There are several ways to look at what you want your money to do, for example you may want to make money in a few days, or instead you might prefer to put money away for a certain amount of time to give you a bigger gain. As I said it will differ for everyone. For those of you new to learning how to invest stock, these are the points to consider, you might want:

An income from your investment now, or later on in life.
An income that stays fixed at one amount.
An income that rises over time.
Or you may want to maximise the potential of growing your money for the future.

To really answer these questions you must review your personal circumstances. Are you living with your parents or with a partner? Do you have kids to look after? School and college fees? A mortgage to pay off? Do you need retirement money? These questions can all be answered by looking at this question, “What do I want from my investment?”.

This guide is great for people learning how to invest stock as it just covers the basics. Remember that getting good in this field means going out and educating yourself, so use all the resources you have at your disposal. Follow these principles when you are looking to invest, these are the rules for professional investors and can easily be followed by those who are learning how to invest stock for the first time. Good luck in your ventures.

By Lance Winslow

When Elliot Spitzer put his sites on Hank Greenberg of AIG a few years ago, he was attempting to punish the company for working within the industry to get failing insurance companies to specialize in the regions they knew the best and understood. The former Attorneys General and eventually Governor called for Anti-Trust Violations and forced Hank Greenberg out of the company.

Next, AIG hired a new team, that team went on to make very bad choices and insured deals for investment banks and became an enabler to much of the manipulation. One Human Resource consultant said it best when he wrote an article for Human Resource Executive Online where he asks are there any “HR Lessons from Investment Banking?” He goes on to state:

Extraordinarily callous and inept management, combined with huge rewards for success and incentives for hiding failure, are some of the typical attitudes exhibited by financial institutions, many of which have been collapsing. HR leaders should understand the dynamics of such meltdowns in order to avoid such a fate in their own organizations.”

One can only wonder that if human resource directors do their jobs to the utmost and are not over ridden by executives hiring their friends if in the future those who lack integrity may never get hired in the first place. Indeed, I guarantee Hank Greenberg who built AIG into the giant that it is today, would have never allowed the company to back such weak deals. But with Hank Greenberg out and new executives in, no one should be surprised at the final outcome.

Market tops are extremely profitable for short sellers. Tops are usually much more exaggerated than bottoms and last only for a short amount of time. This presents a small “window of opportunity” for investors to take notice.

Short Interest

Proven strategies are nothing compared to watching short interest. When the market is forming a top on a chart, the amount of short interest tells traders how many shares are sold short – essentially how many people think the stock price will drop. Watching short interest will improve your trading and help you meet your trading goals.

Technical Analysis

Technical analysis, such as RSI topping or divergence, can help predict weakness in the market. As tops come to an end, RSI charts usually make a double peak, the second lower than the first. If the RSI and price are moving in different directions, the price is likely to fall. Technical analysis is best applied in each timeframe to gauge how big each movement will be.

Strategies for Gapping Down

A true top is made definite by a gap down, indicating that sellers are pushing the price down. Develop your own strategies for gapping down to profit heavily. Many traders use technical analysis, and then use a gap down to confirm. Gaps are the biggest indicator of sentiment; if a stock prices gaps down, it’s probably about to enter a down trend.

Look Back at Historical References

What happened the last time the stock topped? When it was $50 a share? Watching horizontal trendlines is a great way to improve your trading. If the stock dropped after reaching $50 a year ago, it probably will act similarly again. This should always be confirmed first by technical analysis or your own custom indicators. Either way, history is a great way to predict the future.

Author: Jim Brown

If you are thinking of borrowing a large sum of money, ensure that it comes at less troublesome costs. Making its repayments should not be a prospect that bogs you down. Secured homeowner loans are easily available loans that help you meet all your personal needs, especially when it comes to unforeseen expenses.

With a secured loan, you are capable of meeting all huge expenses – be it home improvements, wedding, holiday tour, purchasing a car or even debt consolidation.

It is a condition for availing secured homeowner loans that you pledge your home or any asset of good market value, as collateral. What you actually pledge as security depends on your loan amount and your circumstances. Usually, the range of the loan can go up to £70000, and in some cases, even higher. As per your convenience, the repayment can be made in five to twenty five years.

One of the advantages is that the borrowed amount carries lower interest rate. Your monthly outgoings are, thus, chopped down if you choose to repay in say 25 years. This way, however, you may end up making high interest payments.

The borrowed amount comes with a low interest rate under the secured loan. The longer the term, for which the loan has been taken, the lesser are your monthly outgoings. But, in the final analysis, you may end up making high interest payments this way.

These are considered as suitable loans and last options for people, with a history of late payments, payment defaults, arrears, or those having few or multiple problems. Since they take loan against home or any valued property, the loan provider has no hesitation whatsoever in making the deal. Before applying for the loan, know your credit score, checking your report for inaccuracies, if any.

Take all the available rate quotations, for working out the competitive rates on secured homeowner loans. On the basis of the information available, compare the rates and additional charges on different offers. This way you can pick a suitable deal, keeping your circumstances in mind. Make efforts towards making timely repayments of the loan installments, as it is your home at stake. You may end up losing your home, in case of default.

If you have worked out everything, go ahead and apply for a loan. You surely could be on the right track; with a cool breeze to help you sail through your financial crisis. However, it would be better to know two things about these loans – how they work and what they entail. Avoid getting caught up in the excitement of the feeling, overlooking certain details may get you into ever deeper trouble , rather than lending a helping hand towards financial stability once and for all.

By Jim Hart

There are two main types of financing for a business, debt or equity financing. Debt financing tends to be the type of financing you receive from a traditional bank loan and equity financing tends to be financing you receive from venture capital into your business from outside investors. The benefit of debt financing is that it is finite and you will pay down the debt over time to a zero sum balance without any further obligation to the lender. The down stroke to debt financing is that traditional lenders will take a hard look at your business including how long it has been in existence, income from operation, expenses and will require hard assets for collateral for the loan. Additionally, lenders will most certainly want you (and any other principals of the organization) to personally guarantee repayments of the loan. Another disadvantage of debt financing is that your organization will be burdened with some other type of regular payment (usually a monthly payment) depending on the terms and conditions of the financing and this can absorb critical cash flow, especially with small business.

The benefit of equity financing or venture capital is that you will be receiving money in exchange for equity in your business in the form of stock or some other form of equity like percentage of income or gross/net sales. A primary benefit of this type of financing is that typically there is no monthly payment requirement to investors. Instead, you are giving up ownership interest, most often, permanently.

Traditional lenders, banks for example, will look at your business much differently than venture capitalist. Bankers want a zero-risk or near-zero risk position when they provide financing and will rely almost completely on the operating economics of the business with little regard for “potential future growth”. They want to see strong cash flow backed up by hard assets before they do a deal—the ingredients that most small business lack or they wouldn’t be seeking financing, right? Venture capitalist, on the other hand, tend to consider the management team and the potential future growth of the business more heavily than actual operating numbers, especially for small business with large potential but few sales and little or no operating history. Although these two lender types vary in their approach to analyzing a business for funding, you can be sure that careful scrutiny of you business will be conducted…

Besides the actual operating economics and pro forma analysis, both types of lenders will look closely at two particular documents: 1. Your business plan. 2. Your bank or loan request package. These two documents, if assembled correctly, can make the difference between success and failure when dealing with either lender type.

There are plenty of free SBA related materials that tell you how to create blue-chip, boiler plate business plans but they tend to be written for perfect businesses and not the average Joe who is less than picture perfect. If you are seeking some type of financing for your business I strongly suggest that you visit our site and check out our business e-books. We have several that cover a variety of topics and there are specifically two that will be a real treasure for you to own. One is called Power Planning (a powerful report on writing a wide variety of business plans) and How To Raise Money For You Business (teaches you how to assemble professional loan requests packages). They are priced at $5 each and can be worth millions in the hands of the right person. I am not trying to hype product, I am simply giving you a heads up.

Author: Jim Brown

The financial services that an investor chooses to use will help them create smart investment strategies for online trading. They might choose to trade with an investment management company or they might choose to go it alone and trade on Wall Street with the help of an investment broker. Every decision that they make on their investments will have a direct impact on their financial future.

The smart investment strategies will begin with a definite plan. The planning phase of the investment process can be aided by the help of a financial professional who is thoroughly involved with the online trading world and knows which routes an investor can take to get the most out of the money that they are willing to invest. The investment strategies that are open to an investor can have a short-term or long-term effect on their financial future.

The smart investments will be ones that are diverse. An investor has a better chance of success if they choose to create an investment portfolio that contains well rounded numbers of stocks, bond, annuities, certificate of deposit accounts, and accounts for personal and business use. How aggressive the investor wants to be in his approach to building wealth will determine which smart investment strategies to take.

Some investors prefer to take the route of online trading because it is so quick and simple to do. The investor will be able to see all investment assets in every account that is created and be able to see in real-time the current prices of the stocks and bonds that make up a portion of their portfolio. The online trading investor has access to investment professional’s 24-hours a day through the online forums and blogs that are on the online trading website.

The investor can determine what the smart investment strategies will pay off through the use of handy calculators posted on the online trading website. The investor can also use these calculators to determine if they have a solid investment platform to work with before they begin transacting trades online. These calculators can help the investor plan out a monthly budget or a budget strictly for business use.

Thanks to Nicholas Daniels