Investing 102

[lmnop]

Originally Posted by GregWeld

Good to hear Ray!

Personally -- I'd divide the 21K into 8 to 10 different stocks... and if you want help picking -- then post what you're thinking up here and we'll roll 'em around. With this amount you can get some diversity with sectors and have just a bit of higher risk in order to boost your overall return... balancing out some of the safer lower dividend payers.... but with 20K invested - you should be able to MAKE over $1000 per year... and reinvested -- in 5 years you're going to have capital growth AND more shares paying more dividends and you'll be making the snowball into a snowman!

IF you want to, that is.

Hi Greg
I have been researching some company's that I am familiar with on Google finance. just checking the charts and dividend payout. One thing I learned was to pay attention to the % of the dividend rather than the $ amount as it was confusing me. I was discounting some companies because the divined $ looked low but in reality the % was good. I am not ready to ask opinions on my choices yet as I need to do some better research but I have a question. How do I determine if a stock (company) is "higher risk"? I have been going through this thread trying to find the answer but I haven't found it. So I apologize if it is in here and I am being redundant. As a side This money is in my "if goes up great but if disappears I won't lose a lot sleep" bucket. So I would like a fair amount of risk.
Thanks
Ray