Robin: The Roth IRA is an excellent "next place to go" after the cash emergency fund. Lots of benefits there.

Dan: I am not quite sure if buying your employer's stock is such a great idea, especially if you're going to do a larger amount. I hate to say something that Cramer says, but, you already count on that bank to pay your wages, do you want to count on that bank to provide for investment return as well? It seems like a bit too much of "putting all your eggs in one basket."

Jonas - your thoughts on the VZ iPhone deal? I didn't read much into it, but on an up day for the market, both VZ and AAPL took a little hit.

My impression was that it was a major disappointment that they just got a plain-jane iPhone 4 instead of an upgraded/newer version.

robin: roth IRA is good idea in general, but it sounds like you should check into getting an ING orange account gives 1.1% right now, just a savings acct and yr money is still "liquid."

If you keep it in MMA's or CD's, your Roth IRA is still liquid, as well.

The reason I pimp that kind of account so hard is that you are really limited in how much you can put in, and if you miss the window for a given year, you've missed it and can never make up for it.

Eh, yeah, I see your point from the market's standpoint.  But, from a consumer standpoint, I can't say that anybody I know cares one bit if they didn't get a new/upgraded version.  They just want to get the hell away from AT&T once that contract expires.

Actually, there are lots of CPAs and Chartered Accountants here at N/A! I'm one of em .

I don't use an IRA because I think the concept of retirement is outdated.  It was a blue collar idea where your body would physically fail due to old age and working would be impossible.  I get very bored doing nothing, and I'm the type that even if I "retired", I'd want to be running a business behind the scenes or daytrading or doing eBay / etc.  Maybe that will change if I have kids, but for now I'm more than happy just doing a normal 401k and contributing enough for a maximum employer match.

As for the VZ deal, that rumor has been circulating a long time and has been priced into the stock long ago.  The market sees all and knows all.  The only real loser in this scenario is AT&T (T) obviously, and there will be some continued bloodshed with their stock.

T hit a high of $30 recently, now trades about $27.75.  I see it falling down to around the $27 level (where the SMA200 is), then possibly treading water in a sideways channel until there is another earning report.  Or worst-case, it breaks right through the SMA200 and drops a long way.

OK so I was watching about the 50 billion facebook announcement. Sounds like them going public is a far-stretch, but would you buy stock in them if they did? What about linkedin?

You should do a little research about why a Roth IRA is so great if you're investing after-tax money anyway.  You never have to pay taxes on the gains.

There are major advantages for how long-term money gets treated, and you can have the account with any brokerage you like, so it will trade just like a regular account, with the only limitation being no margin availability.

There are a lot of good resources out there to optimize your long-term tax diversification, which when you're talking about year-in-and-year-out friction on your gains, it can make a huge difference in the final size of your portfolio.

I wouldn't touch those with Jone's penis and Arch pushing, if they ever do go public.

Facebook is on slate for 2012. However I would be leary as Goldman Sachs and some of their HIGH NET WORTH Clients are already being allowed to "buy-in" and keep them under the privately held maximum shareholders as a result of the recent cash infusion deal they worked(ing). Man I remember all the IPO's of the dot.com bubble. eTrade was listing 20+ per week you could put in for shares in if you were an account holder. I got in on RedHat and did well and sold out. But that was back in the days when it was "almost" free money and there were no rules on if you bought in how long you had to hold it for.

SOL up 5% again today, this is getting ridiculous. The pessimist in me expects a pullback, but my $15 target by summer may have been too conservative...

Nobody ever lost money by selling at a healthy gain...

^ Ha. I'm on a stock market forum and in the SOL thread, there was a handful of people who sold their profits after SOL had a 10% gain on December 23rd. They took their profits in the low $9.00s, after we called the bounce at $8.30.

Today the stock is $11.30 and those people no longer post in the thread. They were smart for 2 days when the stock pulled back, and are nowhere to be found when we mention the hundreds / thousands of dollars they passed up

Back to #5 in my OP, you need a clear exit strategy before entering a stock. My exit strategy is no sooner than this summer, so I'm riding this one out all the way.

Very cool thread and an interesting read. I don't think I'll ever start trading as I just don't have the knowledge of how to do it successfully, and likely wouldn't have the balls to play the market if I did

Regardless, lots of interesting information from many people here, I'll be watching this thread for sure.

So you intend to ride it until summer no matter what it does?  That doesn't really sound like an exit strategy.

I guess my question would be, what is your trailing stop threshhold?  Is it going to happen automatically, or do you need to do it manually?  And do you have a maximum gain at which you're willing to walk away with your profits in-hand?

If you have to manually invoke your trailing stop, personally, that would make me lower the gain at which I'm willing to walk, since if the bottom drops out, your ability to actually meet your stop, without selling at much lower than you'd anticipated can be eroded pretty rapidly, unless you get to trade on a Reuters or Bloomberg terminal.

In that case, I'd definitely recommend doing a few hours of reading on both the Permanent Portfolio, and the stuff over at Bogleheads.  Pick the method and allocation that suits you after doing some research, and set-it-and-forget-it.

Yeah, I'll definitely be doing some poking around.  I have an ING orange account and when I opened it, I was getting something over 4% which I was more than happy with.  I've got over $20k in it now, but at a little over 1% it's not exactly making me jump in excitement.

Matt and I are thinking of buying a two family in the suburbs outside of Boston in the next year or two.  We'll either be keeping the condo and renting it out, or we'll share a side of the two family for a year or so and rent the other side.  Because of this, I don't want to tie up too much long term cash, so stuff like an orange account makes it easy to know that I can access it whenever I'd like.

I'm a big research guy and I like to really look into any option I am planning on pursuing, so any suggestions from anyone are welcome.

Another important tool that hasn't been mentioned here is the concept of Rewards Checking accounts.
There are still plenty out there that will guarantee 3-5% on amounts up to $25k per account.

There are few safer, decent yields, that can be had on money you will need access to in the next couple of years.
There are guys on Fatwallet that tote around hundreds of thousands in those kinds of accounts by doing business with multiple institutions.

If you're saving for a house/down payment in the immediate future, that's definitely money you don't want to have in the market, regardless of how it would be invested (individual stocks/ETF's/funds/whatever)

Exactly.  I had around $30k in my ING Savings after my housing rebate.  I know I'm smart enough to get more than 1% on that, and I really only foresee $20k being necessary as liquid emergency funds.

So I've decided that I'm only leaving $20k in savings and investing all the rest.  Of course, that doesn't mean you run out and buy stocks ASAP with all of your excess money.  Instead, I've just transferred that money and have it "available" to invest.  You don't want to get stuck waiting 3-5 business days for it to transfer over and miss the buy you were trying to get.

PSEC stock is up about 4% today. WOOT! At $11.57 the yield is almost 11% and I'm in at $8 so I'll keep riding that Yield train forever.

ha, cool, didn't know there were other traders here.

I think technical analysis is for everyone.  Jone mentioned that fundamental analysis is for long term, technical for short term.  While it's true day/swing trading could be 100% technical if you wanted it to be, I think the overall best strategy (for buy & hold) is timing your investments with fundamentals, and timing your entries with technicals.  I have a buddy that inherited a stock portfolio and he's been trying to get into trading.  He'll email me with his latest investment, asking how he did.  I send him a chart I've analyzed and he always buys in at the top.  He goes by what's on the news and by the time the news has hit mainstream, there's a rally around it.  It always retraces after that.  The dude is smart and makes money on his trades, but if he could catch a few points on the entry waiting for a retrace, and got out at a good exit (instead of waiting for a random moment when he was happy enough with it), I think he'd double the income he'd make per trade.

So, about technical analysis, this is a good free education:

http://www.investopedia.com/university/technical/

And this is a damn fine resource for ~$10:

http://www.amazon.com/Stikky-Stoc...

Of course, the big problem with getting into investing is choosing what trades you want to put on.  You need some sort of screener or technical service.  I've been very happy with the Market Club @ INO.com.

These are services that give you stock alerts:

www.lebed.biz (free)
www.mysmartrend.com ($1200/yr)
www.short-stocks.com ($960/yr)
www.omgyak.com ($2400/yr., easily the best, day-trade focused)
www.investorsunderground.com ($1200/yr., day-trade and penny-stock focused, though I'd recommend Yak over IU for 95% of people)

Also, keep on top of news and use your head.  Best Buy went up when Circuit City went under.  Baidu soared when Google pulled out of China.  Those are no-brainers.  Those services seem expensive, but if you trade that stuff they'll pay for themselves right away.  Even if you're not doing this stuff for a living, if you want to use those services be smart about things and incorporate.  Make it a write-off and it'll be a lot less painful.

Also, whether you're a college kid with precious little money to invest with, or a millionaire looking to get into stock trading, you need to start with trading on paper (simulated trading).  This is a good, 100% free service, with educational tools to boot.

http://www.wallstreetsurvivor.com...

My strategy is "bottom fishing." (http://www.investopedia.com/terms...; In that NESPlayer thread, ARD had recently fallen off a cliff.  The alert was a few points late (thread didn't start til after that happened), but within a short enough span of time that ARD investment yielded 17%.  You can chart it using the dates in the thread if you want.

Hope this gives somebody somewhere an insight.

Good points NESJohnny, but I'm assuming there are very few experts here and very few people willing to pay $1k a year just on screening / education tools when there are plenty of free alternatives.

Like I said on page one, www.finviz.com... has an EXCELLENT stock screener that allows you to browse any fundamentals or technicals you'd like. Candlestick patterns or whatever.

I also agree 100% with buying based on fundamentals and technicals. When you have a fundamentally sound company lining up for a bounce off technicals, that is an extremely high probability play.

The adage goes, no money spent is no money lost. Days where you don't buy anything are good if you didn't lose money. As long as you only invest in "perfect setups", you'll make money much faster than you lose it. Of course no perfect setup is guaranteed, but if you have a 2 or 3% trailing stop set, your losses will be minimal.

I'm also looking to get into a high dividend stock for my portfolio, any suggestions here? I have two potential candidates in the 8-10% dividend range, but I'd be curious for firsthand advice here.

Also, since I added CCME to my watchlist two days ago, it has had back to back 7 and 10% increases. I expect this stock to do very well this year, but unfortunately I'll never get in unless there's a nice pullback. I'd recommend people to watch / research this one themselves.

Ouch SOL is SOL today down 5% on no news? Profit taking?
PSEC even with the runup it pays almost 11% yield.
Also I like NLY current yield is 14.39%.