Beating The Stock Market » Fun With Investments

Which Stocks Does Your Mutual Fund Hold?

joanne — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 02:03:26 +0000

Mutual fund holdings are vital information to fund investors when evaluating a manager’s performance as reported. Without knowing what a fund’s holdings are, investors can neither fully appreciate why a manager has performed well, nor can they thoroughly come to grasp about any poor results. Even if a fund is doing ok, investors may decide that the fund investments are overlapping with their other portfolios or not in line with their own investing goals and want to relocate the money elsewhere. But without access to a set of complete information on a fund’s portfolio, investors are basically kept in the dark and can’t decide for themselves on any of those personal investment decisions.

What Does the Law Require
By law, mutual funds are required to release complete portfolio holdings only twice a year. For actively managed funds, in the interim of 6 months, their holdings could have been turned over many times and the information at investors’ hands can never be real time, live feeds, considering today’s online technology has made instant exchange of information nothing but possible. In fact, the decades-old securities law enacted such a rule because of the concern that fund companies couldn’t afford to mail out a report every day.

Objection to Frequent Portfolio Disclosure
Chief concern among mutual fund companies is that timely portfolio updates of fund holdings can tip off their intentions to the market. It may cause potential front run on a fund where other traders can buy shares ahead of the fund and drive up prices, while the fund is still taking the time to build up positions in a stock. But supporters of full, on-time publication of portfolio holdings argue that the hidden reason why funds are reluctant to do anything beyond what the law requires is that managers might be concerned about revealing questionable trading practice in any disclosure. Funds do a lot of window-dressing trading close to quarter end to boost performance and increase management compensation.

Other Concerns by Financial Advisers
Some financial advisory don’t think that requiring more disclosures of a fund’s holdings is a good idea. They contend that overwhelming information can lead investors to losing their long-term focus and becoming obsessed with fund trading. The advantage of having accessible information as claimed by some investors may be overblown. They also observe that people who are trading stocks and looking for ideas are more interested in getting a first look at a fund’s holdings.

Amid all the conflicting viewpoints, some mutual fund companies are stepping up to make more frequent disclosures on their portfolio holdings. More quarterly updates are now available, with monthly reports on top holdings. To the delight of some investors, a fund named OpenFund lets investors view active trading on its website, while others post weekly trading commentaries by fund managers. A standard monthly reporting ought to be possible if the idea of leaving out sensible trading information is made to consensus.

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Free Trial: Cramer’s Real Money Program

billy — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:23:03 +0000

The Host of Mad Money, Jim Cramer has been helping the average person learn about the stock market for a long time. He’s written several books on investing, as well as being the Chairman on TheStreet.com. I for one have made quite a bit of money listening to Jim Cramer.

One of the ways you can follow Jim and and the rest of the the staff is at RealMoney.com. You’ll find sound, unbiased advice you can count on.
No middle man, no B.S., no delays – just a direct line to people as they share their investment strategies, stock picks and market views, all in real time. They do have a basic no fee section of the website, but if you want to know the meat-and-potato off what’s going on on Wall Street, then this is the service you want.

I’ve been a member of The Street.com’s RealMoney program for a while and I’m not disappointed. Here’s an opportunity to try out RealMoney.com for a 14 day free trial. Click below to check it out.

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Trading Solutions That Can Help

billy — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:00:11 +0000

The three indicies lost just over 1% each on Tuesday. The DOW slipped 96.50 points to close at 9241.45, the S&P 500 shed 12.75 dropping below 1000, and the NASDAQ finished the day at 1969.73 after losing 22.51 points. There were some great gains in some stocks even with the down day.
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The financial sector was the worst of the bunch today. I’m glad that I’ve pulled out of that sector a couple of days ago. I’ll wait for a healthy pull-back and jump in again.
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When I sit on the sidelines waiting to jump back in, I sometimes use the time to try some investing programs I’ve come across.
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One that I recently checked out is the free analysis trading software package from Trading Solutions. It can learn patterns from historical data and allows you to create trading systems that suggest when to buy and sell. The software works with stocks, futures, currencies (FOREX) and many other financial instruments.
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Download Trading Solutions and try it for free. Let me know what you think. As I continue playing around with it, I’ll report back on how I like it.

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Stock Market Game

billy — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:33:57 +0000

I’ve said it many times, and I stand by it; Stock Trading Is Not A Game. It doesn’t matter if you’re a trader or an investor, you must do your homework by researching every stock you plan to invest in or trade But what if you could play a game and practice investing without risk? You could have fun “playing”, while learning and understanding the stock market even more.
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I stumbled upon a free website where you can trade stocks on a virtual Wall Street. UpDown.com is a free fantasy investing site. People join UpDown to practice investing and can earn money for winning contests. Start with a $1,000,000 cash reserve and start trading stocks immediately after registering and creating a profile. With up-to-date news information along with an active forum for members to share ideas and investment strategies.
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The UpDown is a community for people interested in investing in the stock market. If you’re new to the stock market or have a few year under your belt, this site will give you the chance to try different strategies without any actual loss of money.
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UpDown.com provides a platform where investors can view, share, and rate high-quality stock analysis and investment ideas. They then filter, aggregate, rank, and present the community’s investment recommendations for the benefit of all UpDown members looking for valuable investment advice.
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Click the banner below, or the one in our sidebar to join. I just joined myself and it looks like a good place for me to test out new strategies that I normally wouldn’t, with my own money.

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Great Gains So Far For This Week

billy — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:12:28 +0000

I’ve been busy this week with many things, so keeping an eye on the stock market hasn’t been easy for me. Well this afternoon I’ve had the time to see the progress for the past few days and I’m amazed at the gains that have been made this week by the major indicies.
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I told you in a recent post that I jumped out of basically everything until the markets correct themselves again. We’ve had too much of a run up and I’m skeptical. Looking back on the past few days that I missed, I noticed that there were good opportunities to make money on stocks that I sold and they went on a roller coaster ride afterward.
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The one I want to talk about is Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd. (NYSE:AEM), a stock that was as high as $62 only five weeks ago. I made the right choice to sell off my position. After it corrected by 10% I bought a small position back. I let it just sit there not bothering to pick up more as it continued to drop. Unknown to me, I wasn’t paying attention to what the stock did this week as it dropped down to below $47.50. If I was aware of the situation, I would have back the truck up so fast to grab shares at that price. That was Monday morning and now the price per share is $55 (as of 3:45pm). A 16% gain in just three trading days.
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In all the times that I’ve traded AEM, I’ve always made money. This would have been great to profit from, but I’m not going to drive myself crazy because I didn’t get into this play. There will always be more opportunities to make money, but if you want to stay sane while trading stocks, you can’t sit there and think of the “what if’s”.
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Agnico Eagle has been trading within a range of $45 to $60 (which is a nice swing gap) this entire calendar year. When the price drops below $50 I buy quite a bit, as it goes above $55 I prepare to sell. This week was a good opportunity to do exactly that and I’m OK with the fact that I missed it.
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Try to keep that in mind as you go through your portfolio.

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Financial Wellness Carnival

billy — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:00:20 +0000

In these days of trying economic woes, we need to take care of our selves on many different levels.

In the Financial side of wellness I would like to give you another link to a carnival that was released last week, but I forgot to give the link back to the site to get my readers over to the blog to catch up on some great writings. Here is the link to Financial Wellness Project’s 22nd carnival. I know you will enjoy it.

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It’s A Great Time For Vacation

billy — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:26:40 +0000

photo by Alaskan Dude
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This week has been a great week for vacation. My family and I didn’t go take a expensive trip to some where far, instead we’ve decided to stay nearby. Since we knew that we would be on vacation this week, I wrote some post ahead of time as well as submitting a few for blog carnivals.
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Check out the latest carnival to come hosted by On A Quest To Be Debt Free. There are some great articles as well some useful tools that can help you in your daily lives.

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Financial Insight At Money Hacks Carnival

billy — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 04:52:01 +0000

This past week Money Hacks Carnival #38 came out. CreditCards.com hosted the carnival and released a great edition. I recommend everyone to check it out. Here is the link for this edition.
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Money Hacks Carnival #38

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A List Of Penny Stocks

billy — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 20:46:14 +0000

Everybody wants to trade penny stocks. The reason for that is that they have the reputation of having big percentage gains (or losses) in any given day. You can make (or lose) a load boat load of money real quick.
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A list of penny stocks can be found almost anywhere on the internet. Why not, these companies need to raise capital so they can expand their business or even to buy the needed equipment so their company can grow one day be one of the big dogs. There are so many penny stocks out there that are traded everyday, but where are they list? On which board do they trade?
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Most of these stocks are traded on the secondary boards, OTCBB (over the counter bulletin board), Pink Sheets and a few others.
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The main reason that they are so popular is because they are cheap enough where the average person can afford them. How cheap? Well, a stock is considered a penny stock when it’s price per share is less than $5. Many of them are actually less than $1 (they really are penny stocks).
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Just because they are that cheap doesn’t mean that you’ll make a ton of money. Some of these stocks will sit at those levels for months and in a few cases, years. Many amateur traders or newcomers feel that these stocks are on their way up and also feel they can’t get any cheaper. That can’t be further from the truth. If you look around on some of these lists of penny stocks, you will see some even trade in what is referred to as sub-penny. Stay away from these types of stocks. Only one out of thousand will ever get out of this range.

If you want a list of penny stocks, go to Yahoo Finance and type in pink sheet or OTCBB, you will get a list of stocks that you can pick through. Be careful and do your due diligence on the company before investing.
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P.S. Want to learn more about the stock market? take a free two week trail with Jim Cramer from TheStreet.com

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Timing Is Everything In the Stock Market

billy — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 23:28:48 +0000

photo by MP Clemens
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Depending on how you look at today’s activity in the stock market, it could be either considered good or bad. What it comes down to is timing. Timing is everything when you want to beat the stock market. If done correctly, you can have a great day when the market has had a lousy one.
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Let’s look at what happened today. The market was oversold so much in the pre-trading hours that they halted all trading until they could calm the situation down. So when the market did open, most stocks were hit pretty bad. If you timed it well you could have picked up some great price on some solid companies. It’s days like this that will earn you some great reward or separate a man/woman from their money real quick if you’re not careful .
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Today was a great day for me because of the experiences I’ve had in the stock market over the years. If you noticed I didn’t say it was because of my smarts, because even some smart people lost some of their capitol today. To help you understand what I mean I will show you some of the trades that I did today.
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The first one I want to talk about is National City Corp. (NYSE:NCC) This stock was worth a hell of a lot more a few months back, but because of the financial sector’s collapse. The stock has been trading within the $1.36 to $5.00 range for the last 3-4 months. The last time it took a dive, it hit $1.36 and four days later it was at $3.51, a gain of 150%. Today news came out in regards to PNC Financial Group acquired National City Corp. for $5.6 billion. That news and the drop in pre-market trading left the stock at $1.85 per share at the open. I put a buy in at $175 and sat back as the price worked it’s way up to $2.33 at one point and closed at $2.06, a gain of 18% at the close. If I had sold near the high of the day, it would have been a gain of nearly 30%
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My second buy was in a stock that I’ve been following for some time. The company is Quanta Services Inc. (NYSE:PWR). This is a great company with a even better future. Because of the beating that Wall Street has been taking, the stocks of Quanta has felt the pain. There is no reason what-so-ever that the share price is under $20, but it is. When I saw what happened to the stock in early trading I put in a limit price of $15 per share because I didn’t expect it to stay. Wouldn’t you know it, the stock opened at $15 and briefly dropped to $14.84 where it immediately went back to $17 within minutes of the trading day. This is a company that is expect to benefit greatly from the Picken’s Plan, so I’m going to hold on to these stocks for some time. So for the one day I have a gain of 16%
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The last one I’m going to discuss is Lynn Energy Inc. (NASDAQ:LINE). This stock didn’t do has good as I expected, but it did go up from where it started the day at. This a company that has an unbelievable dividend yield. At it’s current price of $15.47, the yield is 15.60%. That right I said 15.60% and to make things even better, the next ex-dividend date is November 5th. At the present time my yield is actually 17.5%, I don’t know about you but I’ll take those types of yields any day of the week.
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I’m not trying to brag or anything like that, but I just wanted to show my readers what is possible even on a bad day. It all comes down to timing.

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