Archive for February, 2006
Phil Town’s upcoming book Rule #1 is sure to become an investment classic. I had the pleasure of reading the book after receiving an advanced copy from Crown Publishers, the distributor of the book which is scheduled to be released in March. What I found was a practical, no-nonsense approach to stocks that will do for investing what David Bach’s The Automatic Millionaire did for personal finance. While Town himself admits that the techniques he describes have been used for years, his true genius lies in his ability to translate classic investing principles into a straight-forward approach that can achieve at least 15% returns a year with little risk.
Jose Anes has a great personal finance blog you might be interested in. He’s a smart guy who covers a lot of ground in his writing. Some of his best articles are lifehack-style tips on how to save a few extra dollars here and there. My favorite article of his is from back in November 2004: Reducing Debt: The Healthy Way.
“Sooner or later almost all of us end up with more debt that we feel comfortable with. Sooner or later we also gain weight by having a life style that is less than perfect. I have a philosophy in life: Loosing Debt is Like Loosing Weight.”
Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2006
by Jason
Robert Kiyosaki’s book, Cashflow Quadrant: Rich Dad’s Guide to Financial Freedom, is an inspirational and compelling guide to breaking free from the earnings “rat race”, by moving from the “left side of the quadrant” where most people work to the “right side” and ultimately financial freedom. Kiyosaki outlines how those of us locked into jobs or self-employment can get ahead by becoming financially literate and consistently building financial assets that generate income; freeing ourselves to spend time doing the things we truly enjoy.
I know you came here looking for another insightful article by Chris. You can expect to be wowed again by Chris tomorrow. In the meantime, here are some recent items of interest:
How Warren Buffett Invests
The folks at BusinessWeek have built a stock screener around Buffett’s investing principles. Check out What Would Warren Do? by By David Braverman.
Be a Home Owner
David Bach (of Automatic Millionaire fame) gives you definitive reasons why you should “own”. Read Why Home Owners Get Rich and Renters Stay Poor and then go out and find a place to live using the new home evaluation site Zillow. For an outsider’s look at Zillow, check out What’s Your Home Really Worth? by Walter S. Mossberg and Katherine Boehret.
Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2006
by Jason
Things aren’t looking to good for SIRI. Meanwhile, Yahoo! is down $3 from when I recommended it a couple weeks ago.
Read on for some suggested reading.
Here are two interesting new websites, in the Web 2.0 spirit, focused on stocks.
Predict Wall Street - This site allows you to make daily predictions on the move of a stock or index. As with a lot of Web 2.0 offerings, it gets better with each additional user. If more people start using this site, it could become a great resource for stock research. My username on the site is “investorgeek”. I’d like to give you a link to my predictions, but it doesn’t seem possible. I think I’ll submit a suggestion to the site to provide this.
Stock Digg - This site, obviously inspired by the social news site Digg, lets users submit news item related to stocks. Submissions can be voted on; popular submissions make it to the front page. I think you can submit blog articles as well (wink wink).
Both of these sites are fairly new, but have some potential as they continue to grow. Enjoy.
Friday, Feb. 10, 2006
by Jason
Last Friday, SIRI dipped below $5.50, which was my level to pickup another 70 shares as planned. I’ve been meaning to try out some options trading, and with the stock so low I thought what the hey. Why not buy 500 options rather than 70 common shares?
Here’s my first lesson for options trading:
1. Make sure you can purchase options through your broker before you look for some to buy.
In Part 1 of this article, we looked at how to use the Morningstar Premium Fund Screener, and I showed you two screens I use to select top funds for my portfolio. This article will move on from the screening phase of the stock screening process to the analysis phase, where we actually choose the candidates for possible investment. The key to successful analysis is understanding how to read the results views provided by the screener. In addition to the basic views provided by Morningstar, the premium screener also allows you to create up to two additional views. By creating custom views that package your most important statistics together, decision making can be more rapid and accurate.
I review of NetworthIQ, a website to keep track of your personal net worth. At its best, the site could usher in a new era of fiscally responsible citizens. In the least, you’ll be able to keep tabs on my financial growth.
