Blog of Personal-finance-info.org

There are companies that allow an investor to purchase stocks directly from the company. This is perfectly okay according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. These are called Direct Stock Plans. It is called a DSPP. The company may require that you already have stocks through employment with the company. It is not required in all companies.

Investing in Stocks Direct ly From the Company
The Direct Stock Plan operates differently than buying stock through a broker. There is no commission charged for these stock plans, but there can be a small fee. The other difference is that the company buys and sells the stock at a given time. The investor cannot sell or trade stocks at will. The investor may turn the stocks over to a broker to sell, but the broker cannot charge a commission. You may be charged a fee by the company. It depends on your agreement.

If you have a favorite company, like the Walt Disney Company, Coca Cola or other brand names in the United State you may be able to implement a Direct Stock Plan to purchase stocks on a regular basis. You can review the list of stocks in your local library or check out the company you are interested in by accessing the company web site.

Another method of investing direct in a company is by way of the Direct Dividend Reinvestment Plan. It is commonly called a DRIP. The good aspect of this type of plan is that instead of receiving the dividends you agree to reinvest the dividends in more stock in the company. It is a regular Direct Stock Plan with a reinvestment agreement. You may do the same reinvestment plan with your other stocks and mutual funds even if you have a broker.

The advantage is that if the company allows a private investor to purchase stocks directly this would allow you to set up a pay check withdrawal each pay period for the purposes of the stock plan. There are various advisory services that can assist you in locating companies that offer these direct stock purchase plan. I would suggest that you find companies you are interested in a make an inquiry with investor relations. More on Investing in Stocks Directly.

In the world’s largest financial market where exchanges reach up to trillions of dollars each day, many people would really want to participate in this market. Aside from being the largest financial market in the world, Forex is also the most liquid market in the world where trades are done 24 hours a day.

Forex Trading Course: A Must for Forex Beginners
A lot of traders have become very rich trading in the Forex market. And, many people who trade in the Forex market everyday have found a great way to replace their day jobs. Some even became millionaires almost overnight by just trading in this financial market.

Trading in the Forex market can be very attractive. However, you should also know that there have been people who suffered extreme financial losses in the Forex market. It is true that the Forex market offers a very good money-making opportunity to a lot of people, but it also has its risks.

It is a fact that people who didn’t have the right knowledge and skills trading in the Forex market suffered huge financial losses and some even went into debt. So, before you enter the Forex market, it is essential that you should have the necessary knowledge and skills as a Forex trader in order to minimize the risk of losing money and maximize the potential of making money.

Many people who were successful in the Forex market have went through a Forex trading course to get the knowledge and skills needed to successfully trade in this very liquid and very large financial market.

In a Forex trading course, you will learn about when it is the right time to buy or sell, chart the movements, spot market trends and also know how to use the different trading platforms available in the Forex market. More on Forex Trading Course.

A forex demo gives you a view of the way that the forex market runs before you dive into it with any real money.

Before airline pilots get behind the controls of an actual plane, they have toflight demonstrators that mimic what being up there will be like without any actual risk. As forex does involve some risk in financial terms, it is wise to start out with a forex trading demo account too.

A forex trading demo is a useful way for an inexperienced investor to begin. Buying books and the internet can show you the basic information, but the best way to train in anything is to have yourself some actual experience. However, with forex, getting your actual experience in the real-world market could possibly mean losing your last cent. So a test account gives you real-world forex training without any real money being gained or lost.

Often times, the test account comes from a broker or other financial web site that has a vested interest in encouraging you to invest in the foreign exchange markets. The scheme is that once you have honed your ability in the test account, you will get into the real market. If the test account can teach you to do this profitably, you will not be asking for a refund. So that is the reason they provide the test account for free.

At the time that you get into an automated forex robot you will have the opportunity to start out in test view. You must have an internet connection of course and you might need to pick up the newest version of a free player such as Java. Then you determine how much test money you want to start out with, and go ahead and trade!

After you are signed in to the forex trading demo, you go ahead as if it were a live experience: studying the charts, following the patterns, looking at web news to research other trader views, and of course starting to trade. The transactions will be recorded in the forex trading demo account alone and will not be sent into the real market since there will be no real money changing hands.

When the market moves, the program calculates what you would have gained or lost by the choices you made. You can say, “Whew! Great that that was only a try out!” or “A pity that wasn’t real life!” And of course once you have developed some skill in the forex trading demo, you can go ahead with the live market and begin making some winning trades for real.

In tough markets there are three types of investors; Bulls that remain in denial, those who sit in cash, and savvy investors who shift toward defensive stocks. Bulls are hard to find these days, sitting on the sidelines isn’t rocket science, so lets take a few minutes to talk about developing a good defense.

First things first, what is a defensive stock? These companies do not manufacture weapons or design body armor, they are stocks that provide a constant performance in bull and bear markets. A low P/E ratio, steady dividend, and low beta are the hallmarks of defensive opportunities.

A Quick Lesson on Beta
While stocks with low betas will, by definition, miss out on some upside when the markets rise, but they avoid the dips that hit most others. Beta is calculated by comparing percentage changes in a company compared to percentage changes in the market for a given period of time.

For example, a stock with a beta of 0.5 has experienced swings half as much as the market, on average. If the market climbs 10%, the stock only gained 5%, but it works coming down as well. When the market dropped 10%, shares only lost 5%. This is seen in non-cyclical stocks with steady performance.

Non-cyclical stocks often offer goods and services that are always in demand. If the economy is slowing down people are still eating dinner when they get hungry and, despite energy prices, probably haven’t switched to candle light just yet. As one can imagine food and utility companies weather economic storms better than most other industries.

Selecting Defensive Stocks
The logic makes sense, but selecting the individual investments is where most run into trouble, making stock screeners an invaluable tool. Below are a few companies in historically defensive industries, with low betas, low P/E ratios, and currently hold a Zacks Rank of #3 or better.

Four Defensive Stocks
AstraZeneca PLC (AZN) has a beta of .36 and a P/E just under 9x. The stock is up about 5% on the year compared to the markets, well we all know how that is going. AstraZeneca develops and sells pharmaceuticals and vaccines. Patients don’t stop taking medicine in tough times, in fact for prescriptions like Nexium, which treats gastrointestinal conditions, sales may even spike.

Elizabeth Arden, Inc. (RDEN) is a cosmetics company that is about flat for the year. Make up is another defensive industry as The stock has a P/E under 11x and a beta of .61. Earnings estimates have been climbing and the consensus is now a 50% year-over-year increase for the current quarter.

Universal Corp (UVV) is trading at under 10 times earnings, and has a beta of .6. The international tobacco processing company has the luxury of very consistent demand in all economic conditions.

Overhill Farms, Inc. (OFI) has more than doubled in value this year. The frozen food supplier for prominent chain restaurants, like Panda Express and Carl’s Jr, in addition to retail and food services. Overhill’s beta is just under 0.5 and the P/E is 7.2x.

---

Bill Wilton is an Editor at Zacks Investment Research for more information please visit http://www.zacks.com.

The Stock Trader’s Almanac calls it the worst performing month of the year, but that is not always the case. During the late 1990s, September was great for stocks. The past couple of Septembers have also yielded positive returns.

The month corresponds with the peak of hurricane season, however. Though oil prices have pulled back from their record highs, any disruption to supplies could send crude prices gushing. Let’s hope the damage from Gustav is minimal.

Regarding the current economic environment, the general expectation is that data will not be very good over the next several months. But, relative to other periods of weakness, the economy is in pretty decent shape. Hidden behind the headlines is the simple fact that unemployment remains at favorable levels. Plus, most homeowners are current on their mortgages.

On a technical basis, we are entering September in a low-volume trading range. Therefore the charts aren’t telling us very much.

My best guess is that we will probably see more choppy markets in September and throughout the fall. Nonetheless, the U.S. markets appear to be the best game in town. Therefore, keep money allocated to U.S. stocks. Long-term investors will be rewarded for doing so.

The Markets
Since I’ve been talking about the late-summer trading environment during the past couple of weeks, I thought it might be more useful to show a chart of SPDRs (SPY), the ETF that tracks the S&P 500, rather than the index itself. Doing so will allow you to view the volume trends that I have been noticing.

Recent Additions to the Focus List
On Thursday, we added four stocks to the Focus List – the most we have added on a single day in quite some time.

There were two primary reasons for this. The first was that the current market environment has discounted companies with positive business momentum and rising earnings estimates. The second was that we saw the opportunity to improve the diversification of the Focus List.

The new additions are Edison International (EIX)- an electric utility, Kansas City Southern (KSU) – a railroad, Fluor (FLR) – a construction and engineering firm, and Metalico (MEA) – a scrap metal processor.
At 29 stocks, the portfolio is still a little smaller than I would prefer. My preference not to overweight basic materials and energy is keeping us out of several Zacks #1 Rank (“strong buy”) and Zacks #2 Rank (“buy”) stocks. There are others, like Visa (V), that we want to look at closer before making a final decision.

My intention is to use any additional market weakness as a buying opportunity. Of course, we will execute stop losses when necessary.

Priceline.com
We sold Priceline.com (PCLN), a stock that was added to the Focus List in Nov 2005. Our concern was that the weakening global economic environment has increased the downside risk for the stock. Given this scenario, we saw little reason not to lock in a nearly 300% return.

---

Charles Rotblut is the Vice President of Web Content for Zacks Investment Research and the Senior Market Analyst for Zacks.com. He oversees the editorial staff, manages the market-beating Focus List, Timely Buys and Top 10 portfolios, and plays an instrumental role in the development of new products. For more information, visit http://www.zacks.com

Anyone can learn forex trading if they want to. If you’ve never considered how to trade online then you should. Why watch your pension fund climb a measly 7% in a year when you can have more than that in a single day? Find out how in this article.

The Wheels Of The Forex Market

You already have some experience of forex when you buy foreign currency for your vacation. To make money out of it, you need to be able to predict if the price is going up or not.

The great thing is that you only need to understand a little to make a lot of money. Thousands of people do this every day.

Predictable Behaviour

The forex market moves in very predictable ways. Within a very short space of time you can easily learn enough about it to be able to predict some major movements, for instance by looking at chart patterns or watching the daily forex news.

Although it helps to learn as much as you can, what really separates a consistent winner from a consistent loser is not knowledge but discipline.

Logic Over Emotion Always

If you want to learn forex trading and win consistently then you must always use your brain and not your heart or your gut.

Always have a reason to place a trade and never trade because you “have a feeling”. Intuition is notoriously inaccurate and many traders have clocked up winning streaks only to lose it all on a single bad trade.

So you must always have a logical reason to trade. As you start to learn basic forex concepts you will easily be able to spot a good opportunity, have a good reason and then place a successful, cash generating trade.

Risk Management

A good reason is not enough. You may spot a pattern in a chart and have reason to believe that the price will move in a specific way but you can never be 100% certain. Even if you are 90% certain, you or I can still get it wrong 10% of the time and you need to be prepared for that.

Every good trader uses something called a “stop” for every order that they make. This is a way of telling the broker that if you get it wrong and the price moves against you then they should reverse your order after a specified backtrace e.g. if it moves against you by 15% or some other percentage.

This way, you can limit your losses to only a small amount and you can live to fight another day. Without a stop, you might have potentially lost everything!

---

Discover how anyone can easily learn to trade online profitably and get your free forex beginners report and easy forex lessons by clicking here: learn forex trading.

If you’re in the Forex trading market, one of the things that can take your training to the next level is currency trading software. The software works similar to the way a signal provider did in the past, but it can be timelier and can give you much quicker and more in-sync information. In addition, it can be better and more accurate than signal providers, since data provided by signal providers can be uneven depending on who you get it from.

For this reason, this type of software can be a good alternative to a signal provider. Good software can help you base your trades on accurate information it’s conveniently provided for you in easy to read format. That said, it should be noted that you are still going to have to do your own homework and learn the ins and outs of the Forex trading market, whether you use software or not.

To do this, set up demo account with the Forex broker you choose and learn about different types of analysis, both technical and fundamental analysis. Technical analysis focuses on how a particular currency is doing in terms of its past history, and therefore how it is likely to continue to perform for at least the short term. Fundamental analysis looks at a particular currency self based upon its country’s own economic, political and social stability and health.

When you trade in Forex, you are betting that one particular currency in a pair you choose is going to do better than another. The way you determine which pair to choose and which currency will do better is by performing the previous types of analysis and by looking at all of the data presented to you.

As you do this, of course, you can use currency trading software to help watch and manage data for your trades. Again, software can be a good “crutch” to help you manage your trades properly, but you’re still going to have to know your own data well enough and trust your own gut instinct enough to make informed decisions. You should never depend on your software to the point where you don’t analyze and follow your own instincts yourself. The software is only meant as a tool to help you decide what should be done on a particular trade.

If you do decide to use currency trading software, do so right from the beginning, when you first set up your demo account. This will help you become familiar with it so that you have it right with you when you begin to do trades in earnest. You can try out a couple of different types of software before you decide on the one they think is right for you. There are a couple of different brands that come highly recommended, with three of the most popular ones reviewed at our web site.

Can you make a lot of money in the Forex market? The answer is yes, you can, with a caveat. You have to know what you’re doing and you have to have the emotional and psychological stability to be able to handle trades dispassionately, buying and selling based upon what your data rather than your emotions tell you. That means that you have to be able to get out of a trade that is still doing well if your data tells you that this should happen, and you have to be to get out of the trade that’s doing poorly without worrying about whether or not you can make your money back. The best Forex brokers do lose on trades sometimes, but they know when to get in, when to hold, and when to get out. And while some people do trade in Forex full-time, many others simply trade on the side for a little extra money, and for fun.

Again, currency trading software can help you manage your data such that it’s available to you all in one place and easily discernible; this can help you figure out what to do more quickly than you might otherwise be able to. However, remember that it’s only a tool and your own best judgment is still what’s going to make or break your success as a Forex trader.

---

For more insights and additional information about how to maximize the usage of Currency Trading Software as well as seeing a review of the three leading currency trading software programs, please visit our web site at http://www.forexcurrencysystems.com