Articles Written by Chris Welch
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 mission is to act as part support group/part watchdog. We hope you enjoy it, and if you’d be interested in helping out, please let us know!
Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2006
by Chris
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)
After launching in February as the first person-to-person lending site in the US, Prosper.com has seen a good deal of activity. Now that it’s been 6 months since they opened their doors, I used Google Blogsearch to see what people’s experiences were out there in the blogosphere.
Almost all of us hear some variation of this from our credit card or car loan company: your interest rate is a variable rate of 14.99% based on Prime plus 6.74%. That means your current rate is 14.99% but may change at any time, so if the prime interest rate goes up or down 0.5% so will your card. Let’s look at the Prime rate closer, and I’ll share some tips to enhance your credit search.
I recently have been looking at the Bid/Ask Spread to help me determine the right time to add to my positions. Here are some tips I’ve picked up that you might find useful when looking at your stock’s spread.
Digg, the extremely popular article voting site, is now part of InvestorGeeks! We’ve recently installed a new feature that will allow you to digg your favorite IG articles right from our site. New articles that we feel are digg-worthy will have the familiar digg box in the upper left corner.
If you’re not currenly a member, simply click the link and you will taken to the registration page where you can setup your account. If you’re already a member, simply log in and record your vote!
What is digg?
Digg allows netizens to vote on content they think is the most interesting. By “digg-ing” an article, you’re giving a vote that gets tallied up with all the other votes on the site. The fastest growing and most highly voted articles will get coveted space on the section page for the world to see.
We’ve been dugg once so far, and it has sents thousands of valuable visitors to the site. By adding digg to every article, we’re hoping you’ll help us gain more exposure for your favorite articles.
Digg has recently added more sections to their site, including a Business & Finance section. Have a look at it, and take a look at some of the other great content on the web as voted by your fellow surfers.
InvestorGeeks on digg:
Chris Welch is “guppywon”
Jason Coleman is “ideadude”
Frank Sanders is “fwsanders”
Sunday, Aug. 6, 2006
by Chris
There is a chronic personality flaw that I see in so many entrepreneurs, that unnecessarily impedes their true success — resistance to having partners. I’ve had partners in the past, and I know the difficulties that can be faced by having a partner that is not picking up their fair share. But the secret to success in business is not to exclude people! Having partners is essential when you want to elevate your wealth.
Ah, the tenbagger. That mythical creature from stock trading lore that grows 10 times in price. This is what dreams are made of. I like a quote from Jason Kelly’s book, The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing. “It takes only $10,000 and two tenbaggers to become a millionaire.” It’s simple in concept really. Find a fast growing company, hold on to it for 5 or 6 years, and sell it for a long-term windfall. The equivalent of 50-60% annually. It’s every investor-boy’s fantasy but mysteriously elusive. In fact there may only be a few stocks a year that turn out to be tenbaggers. So the question is how do you find them? Maybe I can help.
I was recently disappointed because I couldn’t purchase the Mairs & Power Growth Fund (MPGFX) or Artisan International Fund (ARTIX) through my T. Rowe Price Roth IRA. After doing some sleuthing on Morningstar I discovered I could purchase both of these funds through TD Ameritrade, from whom I have a standard brokerage account.
I was ready to transfer all my assets over from TRP to TD Ameritrade and it turned out that transferring a Roth IRA was extremely bothersome. So instead of jumping into anything I thought I had better check to see if there was another discount broker that offered more funds, because I didn’t want to have to do this again. I spent some time at it, and put together a screen using the Morningstar Premium Fund Screener (more info) that would show the number of funds each major discount broker had available, and which funds were covered by all of them. The results were fascinating.
I just wanted to thank everyone who submitted applications to become an InvestorGeek last week. We’ve had some great candidates apply and we’re looking forward to great new members! We’ve been reviewing the applications and will be contacting contributers as we decide on them.
In the meantime look for new content from us all this week, and we thank you for your patience!
Monday, Jun. 19, 2006
by Chris
