Just wondering if there are any active investors who are playing the stock market among us here in sajha. I am a rookie investor myself, so it would be nice to share a few thoughts, ideas, and tips with those involved in it.

From what I have seen in America, owning your own business or being an wise investor is the only way to build wealth. Well you can always hit the jackpot lottery but what are the odds? Investment, Stock Market, and all the financial jargons related to them can be overwhelming and intimidating for first time investors, even more so if you are an immigrant. So, I hope we can make this a knowledge sharing platform to help those who are interested in learning more about investment and stock market in general. And for those of you who have no interest in stocks or investment at all, here is why may be you should reconsider.

We all know about Dell computer and chances are at one point or another we have all used it. If you had spent $5,000 on Dell stocks in 1998 your return as of today would be over $133,000. Or how about ebay? I know I use it for buying and selling time to time. If you had spent $5,000 on ebay in 2003, guess how much would be the value of your stock today? In less than 3 years your $5,000 investment today would be worth over $47,000 today.

Now I am not saying it's a sure thing because you can lose money in the stock market as well and that is why you need to be wise and do your research. So, if we have interested folks, we can make this a way to help each other in a small way.

Thanks.

hukka bro,
I give THUMBS DOWN to FDG. Just because it has high dividend yeild doesn't mean that the company is doing good fundamentally. Usually, companies give high dividend to lure investors.

Reasons, why I wouldn't buy it:
Forward P/E: N/A
The stock just splitted twice (august and sept 05). Something fishy going on!?
Stock price is 3 year high, which is about 425%.

Sources: www.smartmoney.com
moneycentral.msn.com
www.marketwatch.com

Hukka bro! Whoever recommended the stock used its past performace to measure its future, which is just dumb. I believe the stock has reached its optimum high(or close to that). we should buy low and sell high, not the other way around.

Simple advice:

1. Divide the money you want to invest into ten chunks.
2. Buy the stock of ten companies that are profitable now, and will be the dominant player in their field for the foreseeable future. Select no more than two who are up and coming.
3. These companies should all be in different industries.
4. Hold the stock for five to seven years.
5. Profit!

Lady,
If I divide my money into 10 chunks, each chunk will contain only $10.

That's also some money some even dont have that much... :)

Lady!
what you doing for lunch?

What you got to offer?

Lady's choice

Hmmm anything that is spicy...

Sure!
Nepali, indian, chinese, Jamaican ......... your call.

Hmmm considering your financial thingy I would suggest for Taco bell..... :p..oki see u there...

okie, Mexican it is!
Pick u up at 1:30?

Ya as ladyinred said diversify your investment, thats definately is a strategy. But its really hard to keep up with stock market. You have to keep up-to-date with company's performance and there future strategies. But normally when these strategies or performance come to public, it might be too late.

Some people use custom software to check the deviaton in the stock market and to formulate own strategy for investment. There are some Nepali folks who made really big outta stock trade. But its just word of mouth through which I got info.

peace out

Hifh_fly!
I guess you didn't get sarcasm behind my statement on diversifying.
>> If I divide my money into 10 chunks, each chunk will contain only $10.

u_day,

I did not meant my comment regading u r sarcasm. Just thought that it was one of the strategy when people are considering about an investment in stock market.

Airight bro

peace out

Don't let the name fool you. Check PowerInvestor. They have lots of information and resources for learning what things are and how they work. They really aren't trying to sell you anything and even if they were it is cheap for financial information.

Second thing to do is consider your mental state. Can you deal with losing money? Do you need to see daily increases in your portfolio to be happy? Can you stomach seeing your money dwindle for 4-5 months at a stretch? All these things factor into if and how you enter the market.

Are you an investor? Picking issues that are sound and will rise slowly over time?

Are you a trader? Looking for returns daily or weekly or even every minute?

The market is a vengeful mistress who is very unforgiving and very unpredictable. You also have to accept the fact that people will always tell you about how they made a killing in this or that but you will never hear about the 3 other stocks they got killed in. Even those "gurus" in the market don't do as well as they would have you think. If they were making so much money trading the market, would they spend their time selling you their "system"?

But This isn't to say you can't do well in the market. With a resonable amount of effort you can make it pay off, but you need some discipline to decide how you will enter trades and how you will get out of them. You need to keep emotion out of things because feelings cost real money.

Decide on how much help you want. You can get a full service broker who will cost you in commissions, but hold your hand. You can get a mid range broker, or a discounter or go bare-bones with Interactive Brokers trading for $0.01/share but getting no assistance.

You can go high tech with automated trading systems that will make hundreds of trades a day for you, or you can go as simple as a notebook and a pencil.

Once you get through answering all these questions, you will be able to decide if you will be active or passive in the market.

Good luck......

Hey u_day bro, you do bring up a good point about FDG, but I might not totally agree with ya. If you look at the company's 5 years record it has been on a steady growth and I don't always view splits as a bad thing. You actually want your stocks to split, if you already hold their stocks. I mean you don't want negative split where your 10 stocks becomes 1 but positive splits are sign of healthy growth. I agree with you on dividend that it is a way to lure investors, but at the same time you need to look at their major stock holders.

ladyinred, your point is very well taken and we all know we need to diversify our investment. But the question is how and what kinds to include in your diverfication? In my opinion Communication / Technology and Energy stocks are still the way to go about diversifying for long term investment. I don't mean your traditional technolgoy or energy stocks, but more an alternative to them. With oil prices showing no sign to decrease, I am really in a look out for that next alternative energy company to hit it big.....some sort of bio-energy, fossil energy, solar or thermal energy and so on.

Hukka bro, I agree that the company has been growing over last 5 year. But if you are thinking about buying the stock, you should Question if the company still have potential to grow.

>>>I don't always view splits as a bad thing.
Yeah stock split is not a bead thing if you owned the stock before it splitted. Like you said You actually want your stocks to split, if you already hold their stocks.

You would want to check insider trades. I couldn't find any insider trades on that company.
You also mentioned about their major stockholder. what are those institutional stockholders doing now? are they selling it?

hukka bro,

I finally got some info on insider trading at FDG.and guess what? They have been selling it lately. no insider buys.


You can check it out at www.smartmoney.com Enter your ticker symbol and click on insider.
or simply click here:
http://www.smartmoney.com/eqsnaps/index.cfm?story=insiders&symbol=FDG

Hukka bro,

Thanks for mentioning FDG. I just noticed that institutions have been selling it and mutual funds have been buying it lately. Interesting.........

http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/invsub/ownership/ownership.asp

If you are into commodity trading. Buy oil... It's gonna be $100 within a year.