Last year, the illusion of permanent wealth and prosperity was shattered. Just as The Great Depression followed the ‘roaring’ 20s, so we now face a huge correction to years of unrestricted gains. But take the historical parallels further, and Andrew Gordon says this year could be your best chance in decades to secure your financial future.

This from Investor’s Daily Edge:

We thought we were in a “New Era.” We thought the party would never end.

Saving was out. Why save when stock prices were going up so fast. For almost eight straight years the stock market knew only one trajectory and that was up. “Buy now and pay later” defined not just a financial strategy but a lifestyle. And not only for the rich and well-off. Everybody was convinced that they could get rich.

Of course Wall Street was getting all the credit. And a big part of Wall Street’s success was enticing

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A stock market trading plan will not guarantee your success in the markets, but a good plan will enable you to work methodically toward your stock market trading goals while reviewing on a regular basis what is working and what is not. It will act as a roadmap for your trading journey. It will enable you to respond positively and constructively no matter what happens with your individual trades. And, most importantly, it will help you control the only thing a trader can control: his or her own actions.

Finally, stock market trading is a business. It can be a fascinating and sometimes thrilling business, but in the end it is a business. A trading plan helps you treat it as a business.

Successful stock market trading begins with a winning trading plan. It’s as simple as that. If you develop a well-conceived trading plan to guide your actions in the stock …

a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_T9VXVyuEITg/SVXq_Wn9ZRI/AAAAAAAAAms/2Hy4p_jyDYw/s1600-h/Basketball.png"img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_T9VXVyuEITg/SVXq_Wn9ZRI/AAAAAAAAAms/2Hy4p_jyDYw/s320/Basketball.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5284388111914984722" //abr /At last night's Lakers versus the Celtics basketball game, tickets supposedly went for $20,000 each from the scalpers. Basketball, in addition to being a great aerobic sport for participants, a great spectator sport for fans, and is big business. The following companies are involved the sport of basketball in some way, some just a small portion of their business.br /br /Cablevision Systems Corp. (CVC) Their Madison Square Garden division owns and operates the New York Knickerbockers basketball team; they also own the Madison Square Garden Arena, the New York Rangers hockey team, the New York Liberty women's basketball team, and the Hartford Wolf Pack hockey team. The stock has a PE of 45, a PEG of 5.62, and a yield of 2.7%. br /br /Comcast (CMCSA) The company owns Comcast-Spectacor, which ...

Warren Buffet has shown the prowess of his trading strategy once again. Not only did he walk away with over $1.5 billion in his pocket earlier this week, but now his prized investment in Coca-Cola (NYSE:CCE) is jumping in value.

Warren Buffet continues to show investors why his name is consistently at the top of the list of richest Americans. The man makes deals that simply work, no matter what happens in the industry or economy surrounding him.

Take this week’s news as a prime example. Buffet wanted to diversify into the nuclear-power industry, so he offered to buy Constellation Energy Group (NYSE:CEG) for $4.7 billion. It was a pretty low bid and drew plenty of criticism from shareholders.

But most importantly, it drew bids from other competitors.

Shortly after Buffet made his bid, French utility giant Electricite de France stepped in and made an offer for just 50% of

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Thanks to Bizzywomen.com for submitting this article.

Over the past 14 months, drastic market falls have caused many investors to lose significant portions of their savings. The U.S. market has fallen by more than 40%, while international markets are down by 60% or more in many cases.

In this scenario, one of the questions that I am most frequently asked is, “How do I make my money back?” My answer to this question is simple - don’t try to make your money back. If you try, chances are that you are going to take unnecessary risks and end up losing even more money. For this reason, the best advice may not be something that many investors want to hear. It is probably better to forget about the past and concentrate on the future. While the markets are getting hammered, stocks are

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Last week’s news that the unemployment rate is soaring wasn’t met with surprise; but what is news is how many educated and employable people are jumping on the jobless bandwagon. As the Economix blog smartly reports, the number of college graduates with jobs fell 282,000 last month - but just 2,000 of them have looked for a job in the last four weeks. So why are 280,000 educated and unemployed moving from Midtown to Slowdown?  It’s a hard fall from Wall Street to the workforce, and fired financiers are no different from the rest of us; its tough to find a job in Christmastime. 

So what are all those idle bankers betting on this holiday season?  Well, depends which bank fired them!

Citigroup - Abercrombie and Fitch (NYSE:ANF)

We all know the kind of guy that goes to work at Citigroup - he wore the polo shirt with the collar

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Another week and another batch of fascinating video clips about bailouts, economic woes and other crisis-related matters. As to be expected, the good-news videos are in rather short supply. A number of the more interesting clips that have attracted my attention are shared below.

Some of my favourites included in this compilation are: “Peter Schiff uses analogies to describe crisis” (first one up) and “Dr Doom [Marc Faber] - Buffett’s approach to investing is dead” (further down). If you want to view only two of these clips, make sure to see these two.

Please post any interesting video links that you would like to share with the Investment Postcards community, in the comments section.

YouTube: Peter Schiff uses analogies to describe crisis “Ron

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Friday November 7, 2008 Navivest

Apparently, even famed investor Warren Buffet isn’t immune from the battering that the stock market has undergone. His Berkshire Hathaway Inc., (BRK.A) today reported that falling profits in its insurance division as well as a $1.05 billion investment loss caused a 77% drop in Q3 2008 profits.

The company reported that net earnings fell to $1.057 billion, from $4.553 in the Q3 period last year while recording investment and derivative losses of $1.012 billion, compared to a gain of $1.992 billion in the same period last year. Operating earnings for the period were $2.069 billion, a 19.2% drop from the $2.561 billion earned in the third quarter of 2007.

With Berkshire Hathaway only having an average of 1,549,226 class A shares outstanding in the period, the company reported operating earnings per share of $1,335 and net earnings per share of $682. The company also has class B

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Here's some important news no one else is telling you: The Dow is now trading at the equivalent of the 2,500 level!Yes, that's right. In terms of "honest" money -- gold -- the Dow has already lost 77% of its value!How can that be? It's because the world no longer uses "honest" money and instead economies -- and asset prices -- float on variable currency exchange rates with nothing but "a promise to pay" backing them.So to really understand what's happening to values -- the nominal prices that you see in the markets whether they be for stocks, bonds or commodities -- you must look at them in terms of the one asset that always holds its purchasing power: Gold.I explain this concept in detail in my most recent Money and Markets column and I strongly recommend

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Here's some important news no one else is telling you: The Dow is now trading at the equivalent of the 2,500 level!Yes, that's right. In terms of "honest" money -- gold -- the Dow has already lost 77% of its value!How can that be? It's because the world no longer uses "honest" money and instead economies -- and asset prices -- float on variable currency exchange rates with nothing but "a promise to pay" backing them.So to really understand what's happening to values -- the nominal prices that you see in the markets whether they be for stocks, bonds or commodities -- you must look at them in terms of the one asset that always holds its purchasing power: Gold.I explain this concept in detail in my most recent Money and Markets column and I strongly recommend

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