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On-line Investing
for fun and profit
| Les Hudson has been going to Alamo PC SIGs since before the move to Central Park Mall. As far as the stock market is concerned, he's still learning. |
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On-line trading has become
commonplace in the past few years. All the major brokerages now offer on-line
accounts. Commissions run from $7 to $30. Much more if you call to have
a broker make the trade for you. I know of two brokers that have offices
here in San Antonio. They make it easy to open accounts. I have a CharlesSchwab
account and have had no bad experiences. There have been three or four
extremely high volume days in the past year when investors could not log
on to trade and brokers did not answer the phone. Computer crashes have
caused a few brokers to be down for hours.
There is a new breed of on-line brokers that specialize in trading on the Internet. They have no offices to walk in to. They advertise on TV’s financial programs and in financial newspapers. This article is not about day trading. That is quite different from on-line trading. People that do that often buy and sell a stock in a matter of minutes. From personal knowledge, I can tell you that nine out of ten day traders lose money. My accountant will verify that! Sic Using the Internet for research is easy. In fact, there is almost too much information out there. A lot of web sights are free. Here is a current list, collected from members of our financial SIGs (Special Interest Groups) and in no particular order. List of web sights for information:
Alamo PC has four SIGs dealing with the stock market. Individual stocks
and mutual funds are used as examples but buy and sell recommendations
are not given. The main reason I go; I get to talk to smart and successful
people. Like they say, “If you want to fly with the eagles, don’t hang
around a bunch of turkeys”. Come to one of these to get personal questions
answered. (We all have opinions).
While visiting a chat room recently, I heard about this fantastic company. Obscuer Company of Indonesia. As soon as the patent clears, it will revolutionize the auto industry. When the president of the company gets the first contract signed, the rest of the automakers will have to go along or go out of business. Unfortunately, this type of story is a scam to get people to buy and run the price up. The person who puts out stories like this, dump their stock when the suckers buy in at the higher prices. The take-home lesson here is ‘‘Be careful in chat rooms’’. If you are using the research available to you and buy a stock with medium or long term in mind, you don’t need a fast modem. A fast connection is nice when bringing up charts, one after another. For me, Road Runner pays for itself. I can cover more ground. Some spend one or two hours a weekend, and others, hours each day doing research. For people that do not have the time, knowledge, or interest, mutual funds may be the way to invest. With funds, you are hiring a management team to watch things for you. I read a book once in a while (ok, with pictures), and watch CNBC. I learn something every time I go to a SIG. Everybody is in the stock market indirectly. If you have insurance,
or your job has a retirement plan, you are in the market. It’’s no longer
‘‘Just for the rich’’. 51% of Americans own stock.
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Alamo PC Organization, Inc.
San Antonio, TX USA