Every time I need to buy or sell a stock, mutual fund, or index fund, I hop online and enter the trade on my brokerage website. It wasn’t always this easy to invest and we are lucky to live in an age of cheap, online investing.
Lately, I have been a big fan of investing in low fee mutual funds and ETFs. It takes a lot less work and research to invest in funds than stocks. That doesn’t mean I don’t have any individual stocks though. There are many methods to value a stock, and a comparison to similar companies is an important part of the investor’s toolbox.
Almost everyone knows that you can buy and sell stock in a company, but a lot of people don’t fully understand what a share of stock represents.
After Facebook’s record setting $16 billion IPO on Friday, which was received by the public with lackluster results, I started to think about other large IPOs and how they fared. While none had the hype of Facebook, the 3rd biggest IPO of all time, some had much better numbers.
After the recent, highly publicized crash of the Costa Condordia, people around the world are looking hard at the cruise vacation industry. While everyone is focusing on the problems today, it might be a good place for you to invest for tomorrow.
In 1997, Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph created a company called Netflix. Hastings was angry about a late fee charged when he turned in the movie Apollo 13 after the due date. His business was like a traditional video store at the time, but evolved into one of the most recognized brands in North America.
