You may use it... I hope you will... but you are only allowed to use it if you accept all associated risk
What do you have if you have six lawyers buried up to their necks in sand? Not enough sand. (No... seriously... I've had wonderful help from a few good lawyers over the years, but it seems a bit ridiculous that I need to put the 'use at your own risk' stipulation at the top of this, doesn't it?) (I've also been dis-served by lawyers who are parasites on the fabric of society.)
=== SOFTWARE FOR PERSONAL INVESTING
Since about 1999, I have used Personal Stock Monitor Gold from DTLink to help me with my personal investing. (Be sure you get the right one... I think there are two programs with that name.)
PSM Does a good job of what I need, and a few bonuses came along with it. The features I use:
Effective spreadsheet-like presentation of the stocks I want to follow
Useful tabulation of things like gain /loss to date, total gain, etc
Easy download (free) of day's high, low, volume, etc data. The data is then stored in files for subsequent reference.
Graphs... very nice range of options.
Historical data (prices/ volume) can be fetched easily and for free.
There's almost an "accounting" program built in: You can use PSM to track your transactions.
You can download news for the stocks you want to follow.
Click here to visit the site from which PSM is available for trial as shareware. (At 9/07: 30 day free trial/ $50 to continue using thereafter.)
I generally avoid "upgrading" things on my system. Too often there's hassle, etc, etc.... especially with an application as sophisticated as PSM. So imagine my gritted teeth when in 9/07 I decided the time had come. And imagine my delight when everything went smoothly! Not only did it work (I paid for my PSM a long time ago... it would not have been unreasonable for them to say that I wasn't so much upgrading as buying a new product!)... but also everything WORKED... and there were helpful and reassuring prompts along the way, keeping my blood pressure low.
(Upgrade paean continued...) In my old PSM installation, I had about 8 "pages" in the "spreadsheet"... and most of them had scores of rows. Each recorded the date, shares, price, commission of a trade (or a stock that I was interested in, even if the interest didn't lead to a trade), usually with a brief text note explaining why I bought/ sold. I would really, really have been uphappy to lose access to all of that. (As I write this, I marvel at my foolishness in attempting the upgrade!) I also have 248 files with price/ volume histories for different stocks. (They wouldn't be too hard to re-harvest from the web... but I mention it to give you an idea of the scale of the exercise I trust to PSM.) All came though unscathed, still working well. Hurrah! Thank you DTLink! A program I wrote myself that also accesses the data files PSM builds even works still.... I certainly couldn't have expected DTLink to leave their data format set in stone... but it was a relief to learn that the price/ volume data is still in a simple text file, and that even the format is the same as before.
Just to amuse any fellow dinosaurs: Before 1999 for at least 5 years, as I remember it, I used Stocktracker, from Compuserve. It gave me with daily monitoring of my portfolio, and accumulated history files. Anyone else remember those "old days"? :-)
=== HURRAH FOR BROADBAND
With a fast connection to the internet, you can do a lot of useful research online
When trying to decide what and whether to buy or sell, I spend hours with Yahoo's wonderful finance section. That (previous) link should work. The next few links may be "too clever", but from the description, you can soon get what I refer to. By the way... I use Firefox with it's wonderful "Right-Click/ Open in New Tab" mechanism so that I can flip back and forth between already-fetched things.) I fetch a chart. At the bottom of that page I look at a variety of things, in particular the P/E and dividend yield of the stock.
I fetch the Yahoo report of analyst options... which not only shows me the status quo, but what analysts were saying 1, 2 and 3 months ago, and when who up- or down- graded a stock.
Yahoo also provides company profiles and options prices.... and other useful things for the student of the market.
If you are using Firefox, create a new bookmark. It can be anything. Just bookmark this page, as that's the easiest thing you can do immediately. Save the bookmark in the "Bookmarks Toolbar" folder. Right click on the bookmark, click "Properties". Rename the bookmark "2 Year Chart", paste the following in as the "location"......
...... and you should now have a button on your Firefox browser that when clicked pops up a little window. You put a ticker into that, and press enter, and you get the stock's chart!
For the Analyst Opinions page, make a similar bookmark with the following "location":
It's not inexpensive, but the information provided by Valueline is another source which I consult when I'm trying to decide what to do in the market. You may find that you can access the ink-on-paper version of this excellent resource at your local library. If you subscribe, they will send you a CD monthly, and you will be able to access the same material reports online if you have a fast internet connection.
=== STRANGER AND STRANGER SAID ALICE....
If you want some "fun", and you have mastered the basics, and you are willing to be VERY careful about what you do... think about options trading. WARNING: IT CAN GET VERY EXPENSIVE IF YOU MAKE CERTAIN MISTAKES.... for example, if you sell an uncovered call, and the stock breaks down.
The "fun" of options is just trying to keep "your head straight". It's along the lines of rubbing your stomach while patting yourself on the head.
There are two simple types of options: Puts and Calls. You can be the buyer or the seller of either. So you can be in four "places". And sometimes you combine things, e.g. buy some puts at 50 and at the same time sell some puts for $55.
If I buy a call, then the person who has sold it has promised that he or she (you never actually meet the seller... the market finds your opposite number for you, just as when you buy or sell shares) will sell a certain number of shares top me at a certain price... up to a certain date. Note the word "buy". I give the seller money. Today, 12 September 2007, for instance, I can buy a December 07 call for WMT @45 for $1.60. Walmart is currently trading at $42.90. I would do this if I thought Walmart's price was going to rise above $45 before December 21, 2007, when the December 07 options expire. Let's say that by then Walmart is trading at $50. The seller of the call still has to sell the shares to me at $45! However, there's no such thing as a sure thing. If the price of Walmart stays below $45 until December 21, then the call seller will heave a sigh of relief, and keep the $1.60 per share that I paid to have the option of telling him/ her that he/ she must sell me the Walmart @ $45.... but in these circumstances I'd be mad to exercise my option... if I want the Walmart shares, I'd buy them in the open market for less. (Often with options trading, by the way, it never comes to the shares actually changing hands. If you own valuable options, you can sell them before the expiry date, and make your money that way.)
A put is similar... except the buyer of the put has bought the right to say to the seller: "Today I am exercising my option to 'put' these shares to you, i.e. to make you buy them from me at the price we agree back when the put changed hands."
All rather mind bending and fun. Even if you don't ever buy or sell options, the prices at which options are changing hands can help you determine what "the market" thinks about a share's future prospects. (Yahoo also provides you with options prices. The calls and puts for, say, December, are on a separate page from those for, say, January.)
(The remainder of this page is a little more dated than the material above here.)
===
The Investment FAQ is a collection of articles about investments and
personal finance, including stocks, mutual funds, bonds, options,
discount brokers, information sources, life insurance, etc. These
articles offer a comprehensive, unbiased introduction to investing
for beginners as well as reference information for experts.
===
For some reason, my site is frequently searched by people who seem to want to know what the equivalent in London (or England or Britain or the UK ... forgive me trying to keep the search engines fed!).. is of the US's Wall St.
In England, the equivalent of Wall Street is The City. That is London's financial district, where you will find the London Stock Exchange, the Bank of England (British equivalent of the US Fed), the offices of the big banks, etc. The term "The City" is used just as "Wall Street" is used.
I suppose there is one further detail that might be of interest: There are two "London"s. The first is the broad district, which is what people generally mean by "London". It includes the district where "The City" exists, but also Westminster, where Parliament and government are concentrated. It includes Soho and the West End, where there's money and fun. Knightsbridge, Kensington and Oxford Street are where you would go for shopping, student housing and tourist hotels. And of course there are the great parks. And let's not forget Buckingham Palace!
Long ago, the different districts had not yet merged into a metropolis. In those days, the smaller London was just one of the towns that would fuse together. It can be specified by saying "the city of London", whereas the larger London is specified by saying Greater London.
In the rest of this page, there are three parts: Charts, Newsletters, Other.
Charts....
The internet 'ought' to be able to provide you with information on
the prices equities trade at... and it can. Finding exactly what you need can be a pain. If the Yahoo pages cited above are not what you want, then
here is a page with other places to try. They all offer some price or earnings, etc, data, and most offer other resources, e.g. access to reports or news items about companies.
==
Forgotten the ticker for a company? You can find it at the Yahoo Financial site
Starting here: A section of 'Newsletter' listings ....
Money Magazine does a good daily free email to investors interested in the
US markets. To learn more,
click here (That page is a sub-page from a CNN financials site.)
===
The Economist newspaper (England) used to... may still... offer a weekly free email with
business news. Click here.
=== Click here for Digital Tool Magazine archive, etc, from Forbes.
===
To receive a free trial subscription to TECH 100 DAILY REPORT send
E-mail to baccom@aol.com requesting to be placed on the TECH 100
DAILY REPORT mailing list.
For an explanation of the technical indicators in the TECH 100 DAILY
REPORT request the document TECH 100 DAILY MANUAL from baccom@aol.com
From same source....
WALL STREET CONSENSUS MONITOR
Daily report tracks ideas from top market publications and
analysts. It includes: quotes, overbought/ oversold indicators,
trending indicators, technical alert conditions pointers,
fundamental models, market wrap-up, specific company news briefs,
earnings reports, and analyst ratings. To receive a free trial subscription to Wall Street Consensus
Monitor send E-mail to baccom@aol.com requesting a free trial
subscription to WSCM.
===
Other....
A site offering free reports on companies...
click here.
===
Something called Stocknet-USA had a "game" to their web site. It's open for
anyone to play--no purchase obligation or anything like that. New players
get $100,000 "virtual" dollars, to compete with each other using prices from
the real stock market, 15-minute delayed quotes.
That particular item no longer (9/07) seems to exist, but you should be able to find other ways to "play" trader... some of the online brokers will let you "play", for instance, so that you can see how their service works. You can also set up virtual portfolios at Yahoo.
===
From: a newsgroup post long ago, and still (9/07) current...
If you're looking for free / shareware programs to get quotes from
the internet and track stock prices, click here .
In amongst lots of other stuff, you'll find
"Stock programs". There is a large list of stock and news
programs and urls. Each program features a review of features
and tells you for which operating system it is made.
===
'The' Financial Times (London, of course) has a website. (It can give you stock prices, among other things.)
Click here
===
Could be worth visiting from time to time. Warren Buffet's comments in reports.
Click here. (I really, really love the "No frills, no fluff" website from someone, who if anyone does, might deserve a little "fluff" on his website!)
Looking for email, domain registration, or web site hosting? If you visit 1&1's site from here, it helps me. They host my website, and I wouldn't put this link up for them if I wasn't happy with their service. They offer things for the beginner and the corporation.
Ad from page's editor: Yes.. I do enjoy compiling these things for you. I hope they are helpful. However... this doesn't pay my bills!!! Sheepdog Software (tm) is supposed to help do that, so if you found this stuff useful, (and you run a Windows or MS-DOS PC) please visit my freeware and shareware page, download something, and circulate it for me? Links on your page to this page would also be appreciated!
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Page tested for compliance with INDUSTRY (not MS-only) standards, using the free, publicly accessible validator at validator.w3.org