Re: Mel.......Stock Question

> I read a lot of reviews about the Motley Fool's books on
> amazon and a lot of people did not recommend them. Some of the reviews
> said that their (MF) portfolio's actually lost overall for the past
> several years.

Agreed. Thing is, NOBODY has a consistant winner in picking stocks. Even Warren J. Buffet has off years.

What I liked about Fool (borrow the books from the library, eh?) was that they were easy to read (all those terms will get scrambled in your head), they had a reasonably successful strategy, and they were willing to admit when they made a bad pick. I don't recommend you buy and stick by the books, but rather follow the sites instead.

And yes, lots of us lost money in the past few years. It was a truly nasty market and you could burn up all your money in brokers' fees swapping stocks around.

DISCLAIMER: I buy stocks and then forget to play with them for a month or so. If you do a daily watch on them, then Fool and Dogs are the wrong approach. And eDave has some Dandy suggestions!

> Also, I didn't realize that income gained from short term trading was
> taxed differently. I thought you just got a 1099 from the brokerage and
> reported it on your tax return and it just added to your adjusted gross
> and raised your tax liability.

Last time I looked, it was taxed differently.

More thoughts: You will need to adapt your investing style to your lifestyle. If you're like me and buy a stock and then get hyper busy and forget to check on it, you want a very longterm strategy. If you can only afford a little bit of money ($50/month or so) then you absolutly will have to go into DRIP investing (I learned this on the Fool site... the other books I was reading didn't go into this. Fool has a "how to invest on a shoestring" section.)

And try all those out on the yahoo accounts. When you do, look at the broker fees and be sure to deduct that amount from your sale (this will very quickly cure you of some bad trading practices!)

Once you kinda know what you're doing, try some of the other strategies and see how they work for you. For the "got too busy and forgot about it", Dogs is the least trouble because its a "buy and hold" strategy. Warren Buffet's got a good one... heck, the ones analyzed on that site recommended by eDave are all good, too!

Also, if you can get stocks in a sector you're familiar with (like me with the technology sector), you'll make a much better selection than if you just Pick At Random.

Lessee... personally, I like "widows and orphans" stocks: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/analyst/121802.asp and have quite a bit of my portfolio in electric companies (including some that are working on alternate energy.)

You'll find some stuff that you're not comfortable buying... so don't buy it. Some folks don't like tobacco companies (they do well, but some don't like them) or oil companies, etc. That's okay -- avoid companies that you disagree with. There's plenty others out there.

So... go hop on those pretend portfolios and start pretending to buy stocks and let us know how it goes for you. While you're doing that, you can decide which broker you like (go with one of the bigger online guys) and make sure you have enough money to fund your purchases (another reason I went with BUYANDHOLD... at the time, I couldn't afford to plonk down $5k for the accounts everyone else wanted. DRIP brokers will let you start with as little as $50. I think one of my first stocks was Microsoft... just for the heck of it. You can also buy PARTIAL shares (not a full share) with a DRIP. With some brokers you have to buy full shares, and that was a problem for me with the pricier stocks.)

And stay AWAY from futures and penny stocks (and never take advice from spam mail). There's sharks out there and ya don't wanna get et!