The stock price summary is the first information you see when researching a stock. Whether you use a free site like Yahoo Finance, a premium research site, or just your online broker, this information defines a stock every day. And is a great place to start a “Stock Basics” series to show how to sift out the important information when doing your own stock research.
The stock price summary is simply a quick overview of a stocks performance. It tells us where the stock is at right now, what it has done for the day so far and over the past year.
The goal of this initial research is to eventually find a stock that is going to make us some money, from either a rising stock price, dividends, or both. We thought we’d use McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE: MCD) as an example since its a well known company. A few questions we might want answered are where is the stock price at now? How close to it’s one year high is it? Does it pay a dividend? And what’s the yield? Continue Reading…
You see the terms large cap, mid cap, and small cap when describing a company, mutual fund, or ETF. What do they actually mean? How do they impact an investment strategy?
Have you ever had the small misfortune to wake up, take a shower, but have no hot water, or where you’re driving to work, only to get a flat. You hope these problems are just a quick fix. But when they’re not, you know it’s going to cost more than you want to spend. The good news is you have an emergency fund set aside just for these situations, right.
The tax filing deadline is fast approaching. If you haven’t filed your taxes yet, you’re not alone. According to the IRS, about 25% of all taxpayers wait till the last two weeks to file their taxes. For those sitting in that 25%, you have until the deadline of Monday, April 18 to file your taxes this year.
The 2010 IRA contribution deadline is fast approaching. With only a few weeks left, you still have time to make your 2010 contributions. If you have done any retirement planning in the past, a traditional or Roth IRA plays a role in achieving your retirement goals.
There are two views of putting money to work in the market. The first is quietly sitting down, studying balance sheets and deciding on an investment that you’ll probably stick with for a few years. The other is the fast pace, high stress picture you get from movies like Wall Street. With row upon row of traders, two or three computer screens each, yelling at every single up and down tick of a stock. Exactly how realistic that is, I don’t know, but it makes for good movie drama.