Investment advice?

[LowryBigwood]

Hello folks.

I'm looking to get my feet wet in online investing. Can anyone share any tips, opinions, or past experiences with online trading?

Which companies do you like? I've been looking at Datek, Ameritrade, and ETrade. I've never done any investing whatsoever, and feel like it's as good a time as any to start!

So, any advice, tips, or comments are welcomes!

[cd34]

http://www.greenguysboard.com/board/...ad.php?t=28118

[LowryBigwood]

Thanks CD!

I guess I should of searched the forum first.

[Useless]

May I suggest pixel ads?




Just fuckin' with ya Lowry.

[LowryBigwood]

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

May I suggest pixel ads?




Just fuckin' with ya Lowry.

LOL.

[MadMax]

Look into EFTs Lowry (Exchange Traded Funds). They're like money markets, but they're traded on the stock exchanges. They're not "get rich quick" or anything, but there are several the produce a pretty consistent 5%-10% in dividends annually and they tend to be pretty stable. Make sure your brokerage will reinvest your dividends for free, and they can be a nice slice of a portfolio

www.sharebuilder.com has a very nice and reasonably priced structure for long term investing, low dollar or high.

[jerkit]

I use to day trade a lot pre-2000, was actually going to be a broker, have all the required education.

Look into Schwab, I know back in the day if you opened an account and deposited over 20K you had no transaction fees for trading. That may have changed though. Personally now I just trade through my own bank/brokerage combination.

Also for novice investors I'll give a couple tips:

1) Don't try to time the market, just invest regular amounts at regular intervals to index funds or stocks which mirror the market. DIA, SPY, QQQQ mirror the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S & P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 respectively.

2) If you MUST try to time the market, this works 9/10 years.. buy tech in October, sell by March. Rinse and repeat.

3) If you see a big company go down in flames, wait.. wait.. and wait some more, there might be big profits to be made once things look like they're bottoming out.

4) Remember if all hope is lost, it's probably time to buy. And if everyone's ecstatic about the market, it's probably time to sell.

Personally I use to trade tech stocks as well as stock options.. lived for the volatility. Course, my personal accounts made a lot of $ off me in transaction fees, so my minimum trade size would be $2K.

Hope it helps!

[LowryBigwood]

Originally Posted by MadMax

Look into EFTs Lowry (Exchange Traded Funds). They're like money markets, but they're traded on the stock exchanges. They're not "get rich quick" or anything, but there are several the produce a pretty consistent 5%-10% in dividends annually and they tend to be pretty stable. Make sure your brokerage will reinvest your dividends for free, and they can be a nice slice of a portfolio

www.sharebuilder.com has a very nice and reasonably priced structure for long term investing, low dollar or high.

Thanks MadMax, wrote that down, and will check em out. Stable sounds good.

[LowryBigwood]

Originally Posted by jerkit

Look into Schwab, I know back in the day if you opened an account and deposited over 20K you had no transaction fees for trading. That may have changed though. Personally now I just trade through my own bank/brokerage combination.

I've got to start really small, and slow. I wish I had 20k to deposit, but I'm still waiting to take over the adult net.

Originally Posted by jerkit

Also for novice investors I'll give a couple tips:

1) Don't try to time the market, just invest regular amounts at regular intervals to index funds or stocks which mirror the market. DIA, SPY, QQQQ mirror the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S & P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 respectively.

2) If you MUST try to time the market, this works 9/10 years.. buy tech in October, sell by March. Rinse and repeat.

3) If you see a big company go down in flames, wait.. wait.. and wait some more, there might be big profits to be made once things look like they're bottoming out.

4) Remember if all hope is lost, it's probably time to buy. And if everyone's ecstatic about the market, it's probably time to sell.

Personally I use to trade tech stocks as well as stock options.. lived for the volatility. Course, my personal accounts made a lot of $ off me in transaction fees, so my minimum trade size would be $2K.

Hope it helps!

Thanks for the tips, good info!

[thruma]

Check out MITTS

the way they work is you get a guaranteed sell price per share at a specific time in the future.

Some of them trade now at $8 or $9 but guarantee you a sell price of $10 in the future. The bonus is they can also move up to any price at all so you could posibly sell for higher than $10.

Usually if you're getting in at a low price it means you have to wait at least 2 years or more for it to mature. It's a nice secure profit though.

[Tommy]

LowryBigwood

I am starting small to

I am gonna try to buy like around 600.00 a month

right now I like microsoft and Daimler Chrysler

I was thinking about some Coal companies
like CNX and BTU

[Tommy]

does anyone know if I can buy off hours
at off hour prices

I am not talking about putting in a trade at 8pm and having it filled the next day

[jerkit]

Tommy,

I think E*Trade, Ameritrade and the likes offer after hours & pre-market trading. Not quite sure how late they go.

Gotta be careful though with after-hours & pre-market as those markets are usually volatile. Regardless of when you place a trade, never do a "market" trade as you'll get filled at the "ask" at the time the trade hits the floor.

Always make your trade a limit trade.

This means:

If IBM has a bid/ask of $70.00/$70.25, and you put in a regular market order to buy 100 shares of IBM, you'll be filled at $70.25.

Conversely you could look at the day's chart, note that it swings about $1.00 on either side of the open price and put in a LIMIT trade saying that you want to buy 100 shares at $69.25 and won't pay a penny more than that. Then if the share price drops to $69.25 or less during the day, your trade will be filled at $69.25 or lower.

Placing limit trades gets around the need for the volatile after hours markets, and lets you pick the price your comfortable with when entering a stock. Course how you pick that price is totally up to you..

[cd34]

I had a really good response, and firefox crashed on me.

MSFT -- personally, I don't see them as a growth company. if they can move from their current model to a subscription model (that 49.95 thing that runs windows update automatically is a step in that direction), then perhaps. If MSFT is installing software in all volkswagons, are they doing that for profit or for exposure? They have enough cash that they can put their hands into so many things at little to no cost just so that they have their hands in things. They can't easily buy companies due to anti-trust issues and requiring fed approval.

DCX - of the car companies, I like this one the most. Car companies in general don't really excite me due to union issues, pension issues, healthcare issues (due to the union and retirees). But, DCX has one ace up their sleeve which I wish they would use. Daimler builds quiet diesel engines and has used diesels in production motorcars. If Diamler would take their knowledge and move it to Chrysler's assembly lines and drop quiet diesel engines in Jeeps, Caravans and the other Chrysler products, they could instantly raise their cafe rating and spread the cost of the engines across a much larger base - removing the $4k premium for a diesel engine to perhaps $1k per car. No investment in Hybrid power required for an instant fleet upgrade.

CNX & BTU - Coal is the cheapest power that can be generated. It also has the reputation for being the dirtiest. Most of our coal is exported to China. GE has created clean coal burning technology which Florida has turned down in favor of a nuclear plant. GE happens to also make the nuclear plant. I dont recall who it was, but I believe Toshiba purchased a chunk of GE's nuclear division -- which will allow GE to expand into China. With the coal mine disasters recently, coal stocks have probably been punished quite a bit and could be a good buying opportunity -- if and only if you believe that coal is going to be a good power source in the future.

Just my opinion... I could be wrong.

[Tommy]

well

i think Microsoft could be huge

from my stats they have the traffic, they just need an ad system similar to Google, that allows anyone to bid on keywords

I know from the other thread that ad system is being beta tested

also the last few months they are getting more porn friendly so I feel the combination will make it a easy hundred dollar stock in 2 years or so

DCX has some nice cars out and some even nicer ones coming out
I really like Jap cars and am very prejudice against american car companies BUT Chrysler has a few cars I wouldn't mind owning

like the 300 or even the charger and I think the new R/T challenger that they were showing off at the auto show is gonna be a record breaker for sales

there aren't any Gm cars I would buy but Chrysler has like 4 I would strongly consider

Coal is gonna be huge, we have a 200 year supply and its Cheap, very cheap.
new technologies like gasification burns a lot cleaner
and they can make gas and diesel from coal

I think the price of oil is gonna keep going up and power companies will have to turn to coal or nuclear

of course This is just my opinion


anyone else got any investment ideas ???

jerkit, I will try that... Thank you

[jerkit]

Tommy,

Just thought I'd add one quick thing as it relates to your last comments on MSFT.. I believe they're starting a ppc ad program soon.. MSN Ad Center I think it's called. It's been in beta since before Xmas, but you have to be invited to participate in the program currently.

I was looking into it for my non-adult properties at the time, but wasn't accepted into their beta program. Do a search on msn.com for "msn ad center" to find info on it.

Other companies, I've been out of the investing game too long. I use to pay for a _very_ good canadian microcap stock newsletter which brought me some nice returns, but without their help I'd be lost in that area of the market - too much research involved. Go the big, blue chippers, look at their yearly high/lows and on the companies you like, whenever they hit a low, make a purchase?

Darryl

[LowryBigwood]

Originally Posted by Tommy

LowryBigwood

I am starting small to

I am gonna try to buy like around 600.00 a month

right now I like microsoft and Daimler Chrysler

I was thinking about some Coal companies
like CNX and BTU

Hey Tommy,

Microsoft is probably a solid buy, but for me, I'd be scared of the auto industry, but that might be just what will work. According to the earlier post, that would make it a good time to buy.

I'm eyeing Verizon, they were recommended on Bulls & Bears on Fox last week, b/c they are first company to lay 100% fiber optics in the U.S., and are expected to get a BIG share of the Tv/Internet market. Atleast that is what the experts said, and was only 31 dollars and something a share.

I am looking to make a small initial investment, and add to it as I can, I cannot yet afford to setup a steady amount to go into that yet. But, maybe soon.

[LowryBigwood]

Originally Posted by jerkit

Tommy,

I think E*Trade, Ameritrade and the likes offer after hours & pre-market trading. Not quite sure how late they go.

Gotta be careful though with after-hours & pre-market as those markets are usually volatile. Regardless of when you place a trade, never do a "market" trade as you'll get filled at the "ask" at the time the trade hits the floor.

Always make your trade a limit trade.

This means:

If IBM has a bid/ask of $70.00/$70.25, and you put in a regular market order to buy 100 shares of IBM, you'll be filled at $70.25.

Conversely you could look at the day's chart, note that it swings about $1.00 on either side of the open price and put in a LIMIT trade saying that you want to buy 100 shares at $69.25 and won't pay a penny more than that. Then if the share price drops to $69.25 or less during the day, your trade will be filled at $69.25 or lower.

Placing limit trades gets around the need for the volatile after hours markets, and lets you pick the price your comfortable with when entering a stock. Course how you pick that price is totally up to you..

Thanks for this tip. That seems like a nice nugget.

[cd34]

A related article to DCX

http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/13/Autos/diesel/index.htm