Money / Finance / Investing
| Symbol | Price | Change | % Chg |
| $DJIA | 10,570.35 | 5.97 | 0.06% |
| $SPX.X | 1,144.95 | 4.50 | 0.39% |
| $NASDAQ | 2,356.34 | 15.66 | 0.67% |
| GOOG | 570.00 | 9.81 | 1.75% |
| AAPL | 224.68 | 1.66 | 0.74% |
| MSFT | 28.97 | 0.17 | 0.59% |
| CSCO | 25.90 | -0.23 | -0.88% |
| DELL | 14.42 | 0.24 | 1.71% |
| AMZN | 130.50 | 1.68 | 1.30% |
| EBAY | 25.58 | 0.07 | 0.26% |
| BRK.A | 123,542.00 | -48.00 | -0.04% |
Quotes are by IDC Comstock and are delayed 20 minutes.
Fund prices are from Morningstar. |
Investing in Stocks
I can think of no better place to learn to manage your money better than reading How to Make Money in Stocks by William O'Neil and to start reading his paper every day. The approach is based on both fundamental and technical analysis, and includes quantitative analysis techniques as well. Get a free trial subscription to Investor's Business Daily here:
Other must read books are The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, the classic book that Warren Buffet called by far the best book on investing ever written. This is all about value investing.
To understand the global economy, read The Economist. Subscribe here:
Also, for some insightful reading, check out anything written by Harry Dent, including
The Great Boom Ahead,
The Next Great Bubble Boom, and
The Great Depression Ahead. His website is
www.hsdent.com. Kevin Philips wrote an excellent book called
Bad Money. Another excellent book on the current crisis is
The Trillion Dollar Meltdown by Charles Morris. Jim Rogers, the former partner of George Soros has written an excellent book called
Hot Commodities. George Soros also recently wrote a book, but is rather semantically dense and aimed more at professionals. It is worthwhile and is called
The New Economic Paradigm.
One of the few economists who predicted the banking crisis and market meltdown is Prof. Nouriel Roubini of NYU, whose site is
www.rgemonitor.com. He runs a blog and is worth listening to. He is a frequent commentator at
www.bloomberg.com and
www.cnbc.com. Another economist who is a lot of attention these days is Nassim Nicholas Taleb who wrote The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness. His site is
www.fooledbyrandomness.com.
Finally, some older books that actually predicted what we are seeing now were written by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg. I would start with
The Sovereign Individual. Also, read
The Great Reckoning and
Blood in the Streets. While they are not always right on the timing or magnitude, their insights are very valuable and useful, even years later. James Davidson just started a newsletter service in 2009. Subscribe at
www.crisisstrategyalert.com. You can also get some great insights from
www.newsmax.com. Finally, William Bonner has written several books on this crisis, and runs a blog called
www.DailyReckoning.com. Enjoy!
Build a web based business:
There are some extraordinary resources out there, and a whole lot of mediocrity and pure garbage. The question is how to tell the difference. Here are some of the ones I have looked at that seem to be legitimate and add a lot of value for free, before you ever get started with them, or are interesting for other reasons:
This is the best place to start if you are new to internet marketing. This is where I started really learning the depth of what is possible, and it is all free!
These are some great sites, run by professionals, but they are all looking to sell you something. Nevertheless, there is an enormous amout of high quality content that they give away for free, in order to win you over. I have learned something from each of them, and continue to follow on their respective lists.
www.mrfire.com - Joe Vitale - Hypnotic Copywriting, Fantastic content.
www.talkbiznews.com - Paul Myers - Great newsletter, nice guy.
to name a few. This list will be updated as time goes on.
You can register your domain on godaddy.com or networksolutions.com for very little money, and there are many development tools that are either free or very inexpensive.
WordPressDirect seems to be the most favored way to start a website for blogging. It is free to sign up.
Invest in Real Estate:
There are many ways to make a fortune in real estate, and all of them can work if you follow a system and are in the right type of market for that system. One must read is Nothing Down by Robert Allen, a classic. Yes, it really works and you really can buy a property with no money down in any market. The key is finding the right kind of seller. You are looking for someone with a lot of equity who does not want the property, and wants to get rid of it quickly. They are out there, and I have found several. Also, How I Turned $5,000 in Cash into $5,000,000 in Real Estate by William Nickerson, also a classic. This is momre of a book on fixing up properties and reselling them. There are more recent books on real estate investing, but these two reflect the timeless principles of success with two opposing views. Another is Wade Cook's How to Build a Real Estate Money Machine.
Start a company - Write a business plan:
OK, This is the ultimate American dream. Start a company in your garage or dorm room, get a bunch of money from venture capitalists, and sell it into a hot IPO market for hundreds of millions of dollars. People still do all the time. The key is to find an idea whose time has come. The MIT Enterprise Forum guide to writing business plans is valuable when you are first learning. Look at several books, and examples of good business plans that successfully obtained funding. You can find these with Google - the classic American success story! See if you can find their business plan!!! Then copy the style. Go with what works!
Marketing Books
Everyone in business or marketing of any kind should read Robert Cialdini's book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. This is a classic. The key principles of Influence are:
Scarcity
Liking
Authority
Social Proof
Reciprocation
Commitment and Consistency
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