the options investopedia

 For some retirement may seem like it is a long way off. For others retirement may be rapidly approaching. No matter how close it is, now is the time to start investing. With the stock market on the rise again, it may be years before you will have an opportunity like you can have now. So how do you get started? You cannot save for retirement. The cost of living and inflation will always out run any small amount of interest that you might earn. Social Security will continue to be unstable with many doubts to how long it will last. Investing is the only way you can create enough money to enjoy your golden years. Things have changed; years ago you could count on working for the same company for many years. They would offer you a great retirement plan and a gold watch. Now company retirement plans are insecure at best and nonexistent at the worst. The best scenario with a company retirement plan is if they offer a 401k with matching funds of any type. This will leverage your dividends and

  Learn to invest smarter the rest: Easier said the done, right? Actually, it doesn't have to be complicated as we think. We just have to take a more proactive role in learning to invest rather than just say "we are in it for the long term." We don't have to be in the stock market 100% of the time to be in it for the long term. We just need to know what to invest in, when to invest, when to stay out, what to look for, have a stop program to protest us and learn to the correct way to diversify. These posts and my guide give great insight in how to get started. There is no excuse for you not to do better! Build an emergency savings account: Yeah, yeah, I heard that one before. I know it's hard and takes discipline, but we realize how important that becomes when things get rough. Having an emergency savings account offers several advantages: You don't have to tap your 401(k) You have to time to rearrange your finances to make things work You have a financial and,

Dateline was a Sunday evening after I had finished my weekly routine scriptural exercise with my wonderful kids. Suddenly, the current global horror on financial crisis and the 'imminent' crash of the stock market caught my immediate attention which turned me into an instant thinking machine. I could hardly remember how I quickly dashed to my book library to pick one of my most cherished books on investment purchased about three years ago. Not that I had never read the book since I bought it. I had read it all over more than 3 times. What I learned from this life-changing book on stocks and investment is what I want to share with you in this article. Most people believe that the world is set for another round of recession similar to that of 1929. 'The stock market will soon crash' could be one of the headlines of popular tabloid in your country. Never mind. You can make it now even if the stock market crashes. How? Wherever you are, pay attention and fasten your seat be

 Welcome to the world of investing in the stock market. Technology has made it much easier for the normal Joe like me and you to invest in the stock market. There are a number of well known companies that specialize in online stock broking. Some of these would include Scottrade, E*Trade, Tradeking, and Fidelity. All of them have their positives and negatives but share the ideology to let us normal everyday people trade. This type of investing can allow you to start saving for your future and help with your retirement. I have outlined a number of steps that will help you get setup for your investment future. After these steps, I will give you the secret to making big money. Step One The first step is to sign up for one of these accounts. Each one of these companies listed above would have their own website. Search for one of those brokerage firms and try to read through their website. They will have a lot of good offers and things to get you to sign up. I would recommend not signing up

 Engaging into stock market trading without preparations can be a recipe to financial disaster, so if you want to venture into the stock market hoping to make profits, you need to learn a lot of things even before you put your money into it. Like any other businesses, stock trading involves a lot of risks but you have to keep in mind that the risks in trading can be a little overwhelming. Learning the basics, the techniques and strategies as well as a few stock market trading tips will truly help you on how you can venture into stock trading with higher chances of making profits from it. If you are looking at stock trading as an option in investing your money, here are a few stock market trading tips that you might want to know to learn if you can indeed make good profits in this risky but lucrative venture. - Learn everything you can about the stock market, stock trading as well as the risks involved in the trading of stocks. With a good knowledge on these basics you will learn how to

 So you bought yourself a stock and it crashed losing 30 percent overnight. What do you do now? Good question, indeed. And it's a tough one too, so there is really no right general answer. Your trading plan, which you should have prepared before you even started trading, should answer this. But let's ask an easier question and one that is related to the problem at hand. Namely, is it possible to tell how risky individual stocks are so that we could avoid situations like that in future. Certainly, not too many people enjoy waking up to a disaster like that. In other words, we would like to know if there are some measures of risk for the stock market. Yes, there are and one such a measure is called the beta or the beta coefficent. What this coefficient measures is the stock volatility. It measures it relative to a broader market, which has the beta of one. A stock whose beta is one is about as volatile as the general market. Stocks with their betas lower than one are less volatil

 A lot of people try every single day to trade penny stocks only to watch their wallets and their time get drained. You can refund the money you got on a crummy series of courses but a lot of times you can't get back your money or time lost in the markets! So what are the best ways to trade micro cap stocks and make a killing consistently in the stock exchange? Here are my top recommendations. The first way you can trade penny stocks and most common way is to find undervalued stocks that are in a particularly strong position to develop a strong market advantage. This is usually in the form of contracts received by a company from a larger, more important company. This is a great signal to buy because it shows that the company is making a shift towards a larger market, a good indicator of a micro cap stock about to become hot! The next way is to trade the hype. A lot of times what people define when they trade micro cap stocks in terms of analysis is really just hype and excessive po

 Although penny stocks don't cost a penny any more they still hold a lot of potential for new traders trying to make money on the stock market. While penny stocks have been around for a long time, they became really popular in the mid 1990's when the so called dot com boom took over Wall Street. This dot com phenomenon was known as the Penny Express. A lot of money was made at either end of these trades. For aspiring entrepreneurs, they turned to the OTCBB to get venture capital and to get their ideas off the ground. Often these companies went from 10 cents a stocks to ten dollars a stock overnight - the kinds of returns that most traders only dream about. While this propelled a lot of entrepreneurs into massive wealth, traders got on the bandwagon as well. While most of them would normally shy away from penny stocks, they now jumped unto it with open arms, embracing it as the biggest opportunity in decades. Unfortunately the whole dot com boom came to a sad end as many market

 Making money is the foundation of every investment that people engage in. There are many investment options available in the market, and the stock market is one of them. The stock market may be very risky but if done correctly, one can get great profits from it. To make the stock market a worthwhile investment, you need to have the patience, skills and the knowledge of how the business operates. How The Money Grows Everyone who invests in the stock market wants to know how the money grows. Your money in the stock market grows in two major ways; 1. Increase In Stock Value Through the increase in your stock value; the stock value is usually determined by the capital appreciation. The capital appreciation is the rise in value of a stock based on the rising market price. The capital appreciation occurs when the original capital invested in the stock has increased in value. Even if the stock value has increased you cannot earn from it unless you sell the shares. When the company does not p

 When it comes to investing in stocks of any sort, it pays to learn which penny stocks to watch. Perhaps a little advice in stock trading will help you to avoid some risks and learn how to watch for good investment periods. We are all warned about investing in the stock exchange markets or trading in stocks trading for cents. Just because they are available for a fraction of a dollar, does not mean they are valuable and trading for "pennies on the dollar", as the share price is a reflection of the companies market cap and what the market has determined the company to be worth based on the amount of shares issued. Things to avoid when trading penny stocks Try to avoid investing in free stocks. Freely given stock advice or stock tips usually turn out bad results. Avoid trading when the market is low and when the visibility is low as well. Make sure that you trade penny stocks to invest in companies when the market is lucrative and when you choose to buy or sell do so in low cas

 Investors come in many shapes and forms, so to speak, but there are two basic types. First and most common is the more conservative type, who will choose a stock by viewing and researching the basic value of a company. This belief is based on the assumption that so long as a company is run well and continues turning a profit, the stock price will rise. These investors try to buy growth stocks, those that appear most likely to continue growing for a longer term. The second but less common type of investor attempts to estimate how the market may behave based purely on the psychology of the market's people and other similar market factors. The second type of investor is more commonly called a "Quant." This investor assumes that the price of a stock will soar as buyers keep bidding back and forth (often regardless of the stock's value), much like an auction. They often take much higher risks with higher potential returns-but with much higher potential for higher losses i

 A lot of people are familiar with the stock market. However, most individuals remain unfamiliar with terms like "stock", "buying and selling of stocks", "stock market charts, and "bulls and bears". Even the term "stock market" itself remains a point of confusion for those who don't have financial expertise. There are times when they would scratch their heads in bewilderment whenever they hear their neighbors complain about the low prices of stocks on the market or if a colleague suddenly gets a huge windfall from his stock market investments. What most people are aware of is that the trading on the stock market can lead to booming or bankrupt businesses if these companies have played the "stock market game" correctly. Simply put, stocks are representations of the company's assets and profits. If the company makes a profit from the stocks, this value is divided yearly among the shareholders in the form of a dividend. As an