by Doug West
President Bush has been on the TV a lot lately. Too late for him to go down in history as a good president, but we will give him credit for trying. The Pres. has assured us all that we can grow our economy by spending more money. He even sent us each a few hundred to help us do that. One has to wonder if that was a set up for what was to come.

Next came the BIG bailouts for the banks and boys on Wall Street. Hey, where do we apply for some of that 700 Billion dollar pie? Well, don’t hold your breath on that one (in a moment we will show you how to cash in on the bail out actions with simple mini-dow index trading)!

Let’s see, if you are already in debt up to your ears - like the US government is, …

by Doug West

President Bush has been on the TV a lot lately. Too late for him to go down in history as a good president, but we will give him credit for trying. The Pres. has assured us all that we can grow our economy by spending more money. He even sent us each a few hundred to help us do that. One has to wonder if that was a set up for what was to come.

Next came the BIG bailouts for the banks and boys on Wall Street. Hey, where do we apply for some of that 700 Billion dollar pie? Well, don’t hold your breath on that one (in a moment we will show you how to cash in on the bail out actions with simple mini-dow index trading)!

Let’s see, if you are already in debt up to your ears - like the US government is, …

by Doug West

We have taught nearly 1,000 people how to daytrade the mini-Dow or S&P emini index. Of those traders, nearly all were able to successfully trade our simple index strategy on their demo accounts (we only know of 2 exceptions that reportedly could not even get consistent on the demo. One man claimed that every single trade he made was a loss. In my mind that would be as hard to do as to make profit on every trade).

If your day trading strategy is consistently successful on your demo account, then what is the difference when you go live? Mindset! It all boils down to that in your trading (in my opinion this is true of life in general, but you see the results immediately in trading - especially day trading).

I really hate to call what we do as index traders, day trading. That is only because …

by Doug West

The meltdown on Wall Street has taught us all many lessons.

“We Better Learn To Make Our Own Investment Decisions -And Not Let Brokers Make Choices For Us!”

This is a basic fact that we have been teaching for many years now. Most investors either blindly throw money at the market or let a broker do it for them. With just a little time and effort, you can learn to direct your investment accounts and retirement funds on your own.

In this article we want to point you in the right direction, and give you a few crisis tips too.

ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) are an excellent alternative to mutual funds as an investment vehicle for your retirement or other accounts.

There are ETFs that cover every sector of the market. ETFs offer many advantages over mutual funds. Here are a few:

* Tax Advantages - ETFs seldom sell any equity …

The Masters are honored to host the 103rd edition of Festival of Stocks, so without further adu, let's begin the Festivus for the rest of us. First up, let's review stocks and securities recommended by the blogs after all it is the Festival of Stocks: Zachary Scheidt from ZachStocks.com writes about American Water Works Co., Inc. (AWK) - Flooding Impacts Earnings The stock may be a strong short candidate and currently sits below the IPO price of $21.50. James Cullen from the CollegeAnalysts.com sends Primus Guaranty and the Viability of the CDPC Model. Dividends4Life brings us -  Stock Analysis: Chevron Corporation (CVX) From Fat Pitch Financials, Tender Offer Walkthrough, United Rentals. The ...

Pacific Growth Equities’ Analyst Yun Kim recommends Bankrate (RATE) based on the following: 1. Bankrate, Inc. and its subsidiaries own and operate an Internet-based consumer banking and personal finance network. Its Web site, Bankrate.com aggregates information on mortgages, credit cards, automobile loans, money market accounts, certificates of deposit, checking and ATM fees, home equity loans, and online banking fees.

2. The assumption that there will likely be a surge in demand for deposits this year as many major banks are looking to boost their deposits in anticipation of write-downs of bad credit-card debt and home-equity loans.

3. According to Kim, there currently isn’t much online infrastructure to support a surge in demand, and that there aren’t any established players in this area of consumer finance, except for Bankrate.

4. The expected strength in its deposits business can more than offset this volatility.

5. The stock currently trades at 13.2 times

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FinancePuzzle.com was just recently included in the Carnival of Personal Finance #154. This latest carnival is great and filled with many useful links to personal finance blogs. I would like to thank... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

As we approach the end of the May 2008 Personal Finance Bloggers Stock Picking contest, I would like to announce the prize for the next month’s contest. It will be a free copy of “The... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Attention all Financial Bloggers:

I enjoy reading all of the personal finance and investing blogs on the web and would like to create a mechanism to capture the best investing ideas that are being published on a daily basis. I would like to invite you to a stock picking/investing contest. This is a simple contest in which all interested bloggers will compete against each other for the highest percentage return on a monthly basis. Along with the bragging rights, the winner will receive a prize for their superior results.

Rules:
- You have a mock portfolio of $10,000 at the start of the month.
- Provide me an email of how you would like to invest those funds for the month
- You will not be able to change your initial investment allocation throughout the month.
- To kick this off, I would like

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