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Investing

  • Rayet Intro To Investing
    By William Mason Jr.

    1. Get a brokerage account.
    I recommend etrade & scottrade. Don’t get the account until you’re ready to buy. Once you open an account (the offer comes & goes) it comes with free trades for a limited time, so don’t waste free trades. Once you start buying, keep the commission below 1% if possible. I.e., commission on a brokerage account may be $8 per transaction, so make the entire transaction $800 or more. It’s not very beneficial if you buy a share for $ 92 and the commission is $8, your giving away 8% of the profits from the start. If the company goes up 9% in the year, you’ll really only walk away with 1%. You’ll learn more once you read The Intelligent Investor.

    2. Books
    I recommend The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. Read up on Graham’s & Peter Lynch’s books. Make other literature secondary to these.

    3. Get familiar with investing criteria.
    Fundamental criteria
    Return on capital
    Return on equity
    Return on assets
    Etc…
    Valuation ratios
    p/e (rarely if ever buy a share over 15)
    price to book
    etc…
    Profitability data
    Margins:
    Gross, Operating & net
    Etc…
    Growth over 10+ years
    Eps growth
    Revenue growth
    Etc…
    Historical price data
    Dividend data
    Payout ratio
    Dividend growth rate

    How many years of consecutive increases?
    Companies with 20+ years of uninterrupted payments are great to choose from.
    It’s a never ending learning process, so your judgment of the above criteria will be developed from practice.
    I recommend that once you start investing, to stay with an index fund. Buy individual companies once you build a solid foundation based upon the index fund(s). Sector etfs are also great and safe. Index funds & sector etf’s are the absolute best avenues for the investor who doesn’t want to put in the hours and hours of daily studying. Even those who study for hours a day will still go with an index fund(s) and/or sector etf portfolio.
    Sector ETF’s
    1. Xly – consumer discretionary
    2. Xlp – consumer staples
    3. Xle – energy
    4. Xlf – financial
    5. Xlv – healthcare (my favorite)
    6. Xli – industrials
    7. Xlb – materials
    8. Xlk – tech
    9. Xlu – utilities
    Index Fund (etf’s)
    1. Spy – S & P 500
    2. Dia – dow jones
    Leverage plays
    1. Short – spxu
    a. Spxs (3x’s)
    2. Long – spxl (3x’s)
    Be familiar with “Dollar cost averaging”. But still adhere to only buying @ a p/e of 15 and less. Reinvest every dividend received.
    Websites
    Google.com/finance
    Investopedia.com
    This site has a practice account, I strongly recommend you using this for at least 6 months. Considering the current state of the market, it’s not a wise time to buy, so only practicing now is best.
    Stocksplithistory.com
    By all means, review other sites, these are just a few.
    Ask any questions. I’ve learned that there are 2 main types of people when it comes to investing…the fearful and impatient. I’ll choose the impatient over the fearful 100% of the time, keep that in mind.

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