From time to time I find things on the web that pique my interest. And from time to time I’ll share those items with you. So here goes.
NPR has some Financial Advice for Twenty-Somethings.

The Baltimore Sun has an article describing what those with interest-only loans set to reset in the coming year (up to half a trillion dollars worth) can expect.
Wired is running an article examining what’s been going wrong at Sony.
CNNMoney has some advice on some investment choices you may want to avoid and what to be wary of …

On Monday, I wrote about using Google Trends as a resource for investing ideas. I took a look at three restaurant businesses which, while they were on my mind at the time, probably weren’t the best candidates for this kind of research.

Below, I’ll take a look at three Google Trends charts and compare them against some corresponding stock charts.
- Trends for “bull market” and “bear market” vs. the S&P 500.
- Trends for “bed”, “bath”, and “kitchen” vs. Bed Bath and Beyond (BBBY).
- Trends for “book” and “books” vs. Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN).

One of my basic assumptions with regards to planning for the future (whether it is financial planning, or career planning, or other) is that we are in a period of disruptive change (which I’ve been calling the “Information Revolution” - as a way of indicating it is analogous to the Industrial Revolution”).

Periods of gradual change are relatively easy to deal with. Individuals can extrapolate and plan based on the past. Words of wisdom from parents and elders more or less make sense.

Disruptive change adds discontinuities to trend lines. Suddenly what worked in the past does not work anymore. Common knowledge is incorrect. What was good advice can suddenly become very bad advice.

We’ve had discussions here about different ways to use the huge amount of data freely available on the web to make better informed investing decisions. Let’s take a look at some graphs courtesy of Google Trends and see if they can inform us about which restaurant stock to purchase.

If I’m forced to select only one thing about stock trading to tell you, this is it: do NOT average down. This is not to say that averaging your cost basis on the way down never works. But more often than not, averaging down is a bad decision on top of a wrong one already.

We’re pleased to announce our new INVESTools forums. InvestorGeeks is one of the top ranking sites for web surfers looking for information on the high-end investing toolkit called INVESTools. Last year we wrote about the product in an article called “Phil Town and INVESTools.” In that piece we investigated whether these two new faces in the investing community were scams or merely fads. Not only did we find the reviews favorable, we concluded they were here to stay.
Now based on user feedback, we’re pleased to announce the INVESTools Forum whose …

Everybody knows that one of the first critical parts of getting your financial house in order is to create a budget. How can you know if you are living within or beyond your means without one? How can you figure out where best to cut expenses if you don’t know how you’re spending your money?

Budgets, at least as presented by most experts, are very much an all or nothing proposition. What good is a budget that doesn’t include all your expenses? Quite good as it turns out.

Whether it’s due to bad or irrational decisions, youthful naiveté, a bad streak of luck, or situations totally beyond our control, we’re all faced with mounting debt at some point.

If it gets bad enough, some of us may even have to work with our creditors to forgive some of our debt just to remain solvent. But did you know that getting a break on your debt could greatly effect your tax situation? How about the effect of accepting a settlement offer has on your credit report?

I’ve been doing a little research on margin trading, because I’ve recently been using it to float purchases of stock while my sale of some mutual funds clear. So I had a bunch of questions, like “What’s buying power?” and “How much do I need to keep in my brokerage account?” Well, I was once again helped by a terrific tutorial on Margin Trading at Investopedia which answered most of my questions.

I hope you’ll head over there and read it, but let me address some potential questions for you here in case you don’t have time to check it out. (I’ll assume for brevity that you understand what margin trading is)

Today President Bush signed into law a bill that is designed to encourage 401K participation. There are many good points to this bill and estimates are that it will increase the number of people participating in retirement plans. The numbers are still foggy but you are looking at anywhere from 30% to more then double the current number of 401K investors.
Stocks rarely trade at what the company is worth. They generally trade at what people think they are worth – to a point. If you recall your basic Econ 101 …