Ha...yeah, I had trouble only writing "a little" because there is a lot to get excited about when you learn more and see what is really possible! I really do hope that one of the biggest things people take away from this is exactly what you said - investing is really simple as long as you stick to the basics!

Retired at 38, huh? I guess I'd better hurry up...I'm almost 36, so I only have a couple more years until retirement. Ha!

Tracy, are you advocating the start of an official Lateral-G Fund? I'm liking the sound of that! :thumbsup:

So here's a couple thoughts -- and remember that I'm really "exposing myself" personally here - but I can only use information and share that - from what I really KNOW... not what I heard from someone else tell someone else.


I was "reviewing" someones portfolio... at their request. Just a look and compare function.

They were in SONY (SNE).... Okay - great name right?! But the OWNER of the account only knew they were in Sony and that sounded great!

A quick check of the charts -- SNE is DOWN 64% over 10 years and DOWN 50+% over the last 5 years!

Compared to an investment in McDonalds (just to pick a favorite) that is UP 267%

So 100K invested in SONY is now worth 40K and the same 100K invested in McDonalds (at the same time - 10 years ago) is now worth almost 400K. (I'm not doing any math here - I'm just making quick comparisons).

Here's THE POINT.... his money is professionally managed -- so he never did ANY research for himself - nor did he even know WHY he was invested in what he was invested in! That my friends is total BS!! You going to buy a motor and not ask what's in it and how it was built and what kind of power it's making? One 454 could produce 300HP built for a truck - and another could be making 700HP... HUGE difference. Treat your investments the same way! Do just the minimum amount of research. You can check all this in Google Finance or Yahoo Finance - it's so dang easy just to look! It will pay off in the long run.

I see a new brand for instructional books. The first one will be: Investing for Gearheads

So let me ask another question about the Google Finance charts. Looking at Duke Power (DUK) on the chart, I toggle the 10 year view and notice that in around mid 2006, the price went from $33.21 on 10.37M (shares?) to $18.74 on 34.68M (shares?). Does this indicate that the stock "split"? This would be a good thing? On the 5 year chart, it looks as though the price has remained steady .... I assume that this isn't the good growth that you're looking for?

I do have to say that I'm getting a little hooked on checking various stocks out on Google Finance.

What you are looking at there isn't a stock split - it's a dramatic drop in stock price! The other number is the volume of shares traded - I'm not familiar with DUK, but there was obviously a reason (rational, or not) that the price dropped so far and the market reacted with a lot of people trading a lot of shares. (One thing to always remember is that for every share sold, there has to be a buyer somewhere - while half of the traders were freaking out and selling, the other half was buying!) Charts are generally 'split adjusted' meaning it shows the graph as though the splits never happened to keep the chart easier to read.

(EDIT - you got me curious, and a quick search showed that in January 2007 Duke Energy spun off part of its business (forming a new seperate company called Spectra Energy, NYSE:SE) and gave each shareholder 1 share in SE for every 2 shares they held in DUK. This means that if you previously owned DUK, you now owned shares in both DUK and SE. The drop in the stock price would be the market response to this. It makes sense when you think about it - DUK should be worth less money now that the company is smaller, and the market reflected that. This is kind of a special case and isn't something that happens everyday!)

If you click on the 'settings' button below the graph you can turn a lot of the indicators on and off. Take a look at NKE or SBUX and run it out to 5 or 10 years and you'll see at least one split in there.

Make sense?

Marcus

Tracy, are you advocating the start of an official Lateral-G Fund? I'm liking the sound of that! :thumbsup:[/QUOTE]

MARCUS that sounds like a good idea

:lol: Good one!

I like ---

Investing for life.... as in.... a better one!

Your last check should go to the morgue and bounce....

Your kids just fight over it, give it to them while your alive, so you can all enjoy...

Book called DIE BROKE..

To reinforce Greg's advice:
11:16 AM Among the stocks making new 52 week highs as year end approaches are faithful big-caps across a number of industries: Wal-Mart (WMT), Pfizer (PFE), Verizon (VZ), and McDonald's (MCD). All yield more than the 10-year Treasury and likely have more adaptive managements than that in D.C. What's not to like?

Talk about the perfect analogy for your intended audience! :lateral: