17 Jun, 2008
Over the past year, oil (the commodity) has rocketed upwards. In 2008 alone, USO (an ETF that track’s oil’s price) is up 44%. Over the past 52 weeks, this ETF is up around 12%. Oil’s price increase, and the associated increase gas costs, are all over the networks and on television. It seems you can’t watch a half hour news show without someone whining about the rising gas costs.
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26 May, 2008
The classic tech behemoth, Microsoft, has both a consumer and business customers. Most of us are familiar with its consumer side, though its business side is actually which brings in most of its revenues. Most of my knowledge is about Microsoft’s consumer side, whose prospects are looking increasingly atrocious in my opinion.
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13 May, 2008
The old stock market saying “buy low and sell high” is the opposite of what most individual investors do. While investors obviously want to see increasing returns, most inadvertently end up “buying high and selling low” instead. This is largely the result of human psychology and our tendency of wanting to chase yesterday’s hot returns.
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13 May, 2008
Going short, betting that a stock will go down, is something that only experienced investors should do. When you short a stock, you sell shares of the stock without actually owning them (your brokerage borrows the shares for you which enables you to sell them later). You later must purchase back the shares, which is known as covering. When you short a stock, you hope to sell high and then later buy back low.
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