September 15th, 2008, a day that will live in infamy. Famous words, much the same, made in 1941 by our President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As the one year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers collapse approaches, I find myself looking at the economic picture and wondering if we really dodged a bullet or if we traded in our single shot rifle pointed at our head for an semi automatic? Did we really just blow up the asteroid, on a crash collision with Earth, or just shatter it into a million more deadly pieces? Our government, Treasury and Federal Reserve all claim we have averted disaster, apparently the recession is over. I would be thrilled to believe this, I truly would, but let us look at the facts.

As I look over my notes and calculations I find some interesting issues and facts popping up. For instance, would it surprise any of you …

by Pete Veslick

Anyone who has money to invest is hurt by low interest rates. If you want to buy things on credit such as a car you might like the interest rates where they are now but people who have money sitting around are not happy. Right now the saying time is money does not really apply to bank cds and other investments where you make money by lending it to banks.

The people that are hurt by low interest rates are those people that like to invest in bank certificate of deposits (CDs) and other investment that are guaranteed by the government. Government bonds would also fall into that category. Seniors often have their money in this type of safe investment vehicle because they need to be guaranteed that they will not lose the money. In exchange for the low risk, they are willing to make less …

by Michael Janston

One investment plan for making profits on the stock exchange is trend following. In this strategy you wait for a trend to create itself and then following it, timing both your entrance and exit carefully. It’s a method that works in upturns or downturns in the market. Rather than trying to foretell the trends, trend disciples go with trends that are established. The figure to be invested is decided by the size of the trading account and how stable the issue appears to be.

Traders who use trend following use software that is programmed to exit when a surprising falling trend in their issue happens. Then the traders wait to determine if the trend gets back on track before re-entering. It’s really about staying with an established trend and getting out if the trend changes direction.

Price is the first rule of trend following. Other indicators …

by William Davies

Global commodity trading now takes place on a growing platform of modern, transparent commodity exchanges across all time zones. Using agreed frameworks of rules and regulations and standard contract designs we now see a wide range of commodities traded between end users and primary producers. The result is that it is now much easier to buy and sell across the range of basic commodities from orange juice to gold bullion, from crude oil to coffee beans.

While some of the major commodities like coffee and crude oil have been traded for a number of years, we are now seeing in modern commodity markets the strong innovation theme leading to new futures contracts being traded. One area where new product development has made a notable change is in the trading of carbon emission permits. Given the growing global concern about the serious long term impact to the environment …

by Chris Thompson

Online brokers are all over so it’s hard to figure out which one is really the best. I’ve compiled a list of the different ones out there and give a brief description of my thoughts on each.

Etrade is one of the earlier players in the discount brokerage and practically invented online brokerages. The user interface is amazing and the commissions are on the higher side in this day and age.

TD Ameritrade is also an early player and it’s main competition is Charles Schwab and Etrade. They have good advertising but the interface isn’t great and support is okay mediocre. However, they do have a solid following and trades are $9.99 no matter how much you trade or have with them.

Charles Schwab have been cleaning up in the last year or so, especially with the troubles of Etrade. Honestly, I’ve been thinking …

By Guest Author: Tony Farrell (http://www.monthly-dividend-stocks.com)

Get my list of high yield monthly dividend stocks at http://www.monthly-dividend-stocks.com
My strategy: Research and discover all high yield monthly dividend payers, and start buying them up a whopping $ 200 or so worth at a time. WHAT?!?!? ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?!?!? Yes that’s right ONLY $ 200 each. If I had $ 20,000 to invest then I’d be acquiring about 96 positions at $ 200 each and paying the rest in trade commissions. Always get dividends paid in cash, make additional cash infusions when I can to accelerate the process, and use the cash to acquire more positions in other monthly dividend payers. Continue to buy more and more positions as enough cash becomes available, $ 200 or so at a time in each one, starting with higher risk / higher yield and working down to lower risk / lower yield (remember, time is on …

by Chris Blanchet

Beginning investors who want to learn stock market investing techniques will gain a competitive edge by digging into the different types of technical analysis patterns and indicators. While technical analysis is never enough as on its own, it can certainly give investors an indication as to whether they should buy or sell stock.

Although there are literally hundreds of different technical analysis measurements, the three discussed here are among the most reliable formation that investors will cross. It makes the most sense to discover them as soon as possible when one starts to learn stock market investing techniques:

Head-and-Shoulders. Long considered the strongest technical indicator, a head-and-shoulders formation provides a very reliable trend indication as to whether to buy or sell a position in the stock under consideration. A head-and-shoulders top pattern has three sharp high points, created by three successive rallies, with the second rally reaching a …

by Warren Parker

If you want to be a successful investor in the future, then it is essential that you learn more about mutual funds and how they can benefit you. The best performing mutual funds will allow you to spread your investments across different assets thereby reducing your risk.

There are many mutual fund investment tips one, of which is to look at the past performance of a specific fund in order to determine how well it will do in the future which is not a very good indicator. Taking a look at the trade volume of particular mutual fund is also ineffective.

So given this situation, how can you find the best performing mutual funds available?

The answer to this question depends on what types of investments you want to invest in. When learning more about mutual funds, you will learn that there are literally thousands of different available funds …

by Chris Blanchet

When it comes to security price momentum, many people will look at the general trend of a security without fully understanding the technical basis of the term. What Momentum really tells us, however, is whether the trend will continue or reverse. Without technical analysis and events like Momentum, many investors would buy high and sell low.

What Is Momentum Similar to the Moving Average Convergence-Divergence (MACD) oscillator, Momentum measures how much a security’s price has changed over a given time. With a understanding of technical analysis and this particular event, investors will understand whether a slight pull back in price is part of the normal fluctuations of stock prices or if it is indeed a bearish signal for the price.

In other words, Momentum allows investors to see the true strength of particular price trend. When relying on multiple technical analysis tools in conjunction with Momentum, investors are …

by Greg Deffson

Stock markets are the most risky way to make money. However, that said they are easily most easily available methods to make money and they provide gains which are far in excess of any other money making methods.

There are a couple of methods by which you can invest in shares. Opening an account with a share broker is the first method and the second method is to invest in mutual funds of a reputed company. These mutual fund companies hire managers to invest the money by judicially picking up stocks in a lot of companies and then they monitor these stocks on a daily basis and exit these companies at any sign of trouble.

Long term investing is generally more risk free than the short term investing. Short term investing requires more effort as well as more monitoring.

Initially you can avoid volatile stocks and that …