Well if you are afraid to take a plunge straight away into the stock market then here comes the Stock market fantasy game. Practice investing in the stock market, without losing any of your own money! This free stock market fantasy game is not only informative, but it’s fun. They’ll start you with $1,000,000 reserve and you can start playing after you register and create a profile. Have fun learning!

This post here talks about the topic which is essential for your to understand well if you want to make more money. It’s key in this economic environment to learn to invest money, and if you’re a new investor, the Saving Cash Tips blog has resources for getting started.  Some of their ideas include using a self-directed investing or IRA account, using ETFs to invest, and looking to diversify with gold, real estate and other investments.

I have frequently talked about gold investing as part of your portfolio diversification as well as an effective hedge against currency and inflation risk. So this post is really informative and gives you information on gold investing via 401k. You will get all your answers about 401k rollover and more importantly about gold 401k rollover. It is important to know that you can invest in gold and other precious metals with your 401k account.

Saving for retirement can be a difficult and often daunting task but at Retire Early Guide you can find tips on how to make saving for retirement enjoyable!  You’ll find advise on everything from how to cut variable expenses, how to reduce your mortgage debt faster, how to save for your children’s post secondary education, the right asset allocation for your retirement portfolio and more!

A lot of people worry about 401k rollovers and this site explains that really well.If you are leaving your current employer and are not sure what your next move should be regarding your 401k plan, you have the option to leave your money where it is. While you should not leave your retirement funds with your previous employer for too long, it is a good option while you get 401k rollover info and weight your options.

Ty Coon over at Stock Market Investing Today has started a unique Thirty Day Stock Market Investing Challenge. Each day, he’ll pick one stock and invest $1,000 in a stock simulator. Over the course of 30 trading days, he’ll pick 30 stocks and play them until he is either stopped out or reaches his target gain. Be sure and follow along.

I hope that you will get to know a ton of new things by reading these posts above and will be able to invest better for your future. Happy reading !

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The specifications of each plan dictate the obligation to either reinvest the dividend or not, and only a small amount of cash is required to initiate the process.
In fact, in most cases it is sufficient to own a minimum of one single share to be able to partake in a DRP. These plans are an efficient way for Fools to put their dividends to much better use, instead of either spending them or leaving them inactive in a money market account.

Furthermore, most DRPs do not even charge to have the dividends reinvested, while many companies offer the option to investors to buy extra shares for a small amount, if indeed at all.
Stock Purchase Plans (SPPs), often known as Optional Cash Purchase Plans (OCPs) enable any investor to put in cash ranging from $10 to $50 to buy stock at a lower rate than the market value, usually a discount that amounts to around one to ten percent. DRPs effectively put an obligation on investors to frequently purchase stock and to guard it.
It encourages a more deep-rooted financial vision from investors through the consistent investment of a measured amount of money which does not necessarily have to be a huge, as long as it is indeed consistent.

These consistent investments are encouraged to be made by companies through this system of DRPs, which can be taken through the direct debiting from the bank account of shareholders and investors.

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The word dividend comes from the Latin word ‘dividendum’ referring to anything that is divided up. This was applied to a number of participants dividing war booty or the rewards from trading. Now, similar to then one would want to raid the richest city or hopefully invest in stocks with high dividends.

The practice nowadays is that companies retain a portion of the profits, called the retained earnings and the remainder is divided amongst the shareholders according to the equity or amount of shares each shareholder owns. This dividend payout is done once a month, a year or a few times a year. If you get lucky you might even, in addition receive a bonus dividend.

Now, the question is what do you do with your share from said dividend investing? Well you can either keep the dividends as cash or reinvest in the same company using dividend reinvestment plans or DRIPS. This is a very good way to increase your share in the relevant company, thus increasing your share in a positively producing company holding stocks with high dividends. DRIPS investment portfolios run on automatic and are a great long term investment strategy as long as the company in question, on average performs positively and steadily. An added bonus is of course that you save on transaction fees usually incurred from the purchase of additional shares.

DRIPS dividend investing is a great way to invest if you are one of those people who do not like to watch the ups and downs of the markets with an eagle eye. Of course you should keep an eye on all your investment, but with DRIPS you do not have to do it as much.

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Normally when a company earns money out of its production, after retaining a certain amount, they would give out the rest of its earning to its shareholders as dividends. In short, after investing your money on a certain company, naturally if the business is good they should be able to earn a certain amount. This amount is what you give back to your investors.

A dividend yield indicates how much one gets for a certain stock. It is computed as dividends that are given out annually, divided by the price per share. As an investor, they usually look at these data to see which stocks or companies are worth investing in.

Thus, if two companies give out the same dividends, it doesn’t automatically mean that they would have the same dividend yields because it would greatly depend on a price per share. And so let us look at the following example:

Company A  Dividends: $10
Price Per Share: $20

Dividend Yield: 50%

Company B  Dividends: $10
Price Per Share: $40
Dividend Yield: 25%

Based on this, one could assume that just because a stock has a higher price per share does not necessarily mean that it has higher Dividend Yield. And for sure they would prefer the stocks of Company B.

Some investors would prefer stocks with higher dividend yields as it means they could get more money for what they have invested in. However, some would say that having high divident yields could indicate an underpriced share and may mean that the company would not earn soon. It’s still an ongoing discussion about the importance and accuracy of dividends yields. Well, there is always two sides to a coin.

In relation to this, there is also the Ex-Dividend which is important to understand. Once the Ex-Dividend Date is declared, whoever owns the stock during that time will receive the dividends declared, however after receiving such dividends, anyone who buys these stocks will no longer benefit from receiving dividends. Naturally the price for these stocks would also decrease as there would be lesser demand for them.

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For example Visa, America’ giant credit card company has been on the rise slowly, doubling it low profit sector. Only in October 2008, Visa reported some very impressive results. The performance was strong in numbers during that third-quarter. It indicated that people are still borrowing and that their revenue was up by 10% from 2007. The average earning came to two pennies above the estimates. At present Visa is four for four. This means that in the last four quarters it has risen by seven cents.

Although there has been a downturn in the spending levels, there are some signs of recovery. People are buying more consumer goods and the poor performance levels of the electronics giant Best Buy is beginning to show improvement. In its latest report, from Best Buy, the company has reported a greater customer turn out in some of it stores.
So fiscally the performance of Best Buy looks really bright for the time being.

Looking at 3M Co- a highly diversified technology company, with many varied investments, it seems to have a winning combination. I really like this company, as do many other people and organizations.
You must as an investor look for the right entry point for buying their stock.

These the best of three US dividend stocks, based on how I think the stocks will perform as income investments over a length of given time. There are many that are not a good buy at present, so keep an open mind in case the situation changes. This type is much more subjective than objective.

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Considering the current recession, it is often argued as to whether having tax free investments is a good thing. The municipal bonds certainly don’t attract any federal or state taxes, so the investor makes a huge long term saving on that. These type of bonds are usually considered to be good credit because they offer much better value than corporate bonds as well as taxable bonds. If you live in California then they are known as Califo bonds.

In the present climate Califo municipal bonds is the way forward, as they look really solid and can give you a good return. This is because California has the highest rate of tax  and it makes sense to avoid paying excessively high tax at any cost. If you have a huge amount of cash to spare then it prudent to invest it so your money works for you earning interest. There is a marvelous opportunity to invest in Californian tax free bonds or the California tax free municipal. It does not matter which part of the country you live in, state is unimportant. Anyone living anywhere in the USA can afford to invest. This way you can avoid federal taxes, but not the local taxes. You can apply to invest in municipal bonds in  any state where you reside.

The process is simple:

a/ You open up an account with the TreasuryDirect.gov and buy directly.

b/ Or you can go through the mutual funds and invest through them.

For (a) Municipal Income Fidelity is a good choice. The best way to invest is through the municipal bonds, as they are discounted in recessionary times.

For investment (b) there are many companies such as American Funds RTCFX, TAFTX,TECFX, The Vanguard CA tax free- VCADX, The Schwab tax free- SWCAX. There are also the electronically traded funds called ETF’s which are also tax free.

When considering any kind of investment make sure you ask for the yield on tax free bonds. The yield totally depends on the state of the economy, and these municipal bonds do incur some amount of interest rate risk. There are some options available like fixed rate bonds funds or the floating rate muni bonds. Generally speaking the state free munis bonds are considered to be highly rated as much as triple AAA. They have the backing of the state government these states can go into default and it could make the bonds a risky venture.

The other option to be considered is the Zero Coupon Bonds, which have little interest value, but they a nevertheless good value as they have a deep discount value.

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The idea of index funds was created by the founder of Vanguard named John Bogle. He created a fund which tracked the Standard & Poor’s index ($INX) of 500 large companies. This index fund was not a hit straight away. It was slow to start with. But slowly people realized that this fund which is so passively managed was beating most of the actively managed funds on a consistent basis. And this has been the case ever since. Only one in three actively managed stock funds in operation since 1976 has beaten the Vanguard 500.

Since then, there have been hundreds of index funds which have been launched by all fund houses. These funds are launched on any index which depending upon market capitalization like large cap, mid-cap or small cap. These can be based on any specialty, international markets or even bonds as well.

The most popular players which have launched index funds are Vanguard, Fidelity and Charles Schwab

Large Cap Index Funds

FSMKX          Fidelity Spartan 500 Index Investor

FSTMX           Fidelity Spartan Total Market Index Inv

VFINX            Vanguard 500 Index Investor

VTSMX           Vanguard Total Stock Mkt Idx

Best Mid cap index fund

VIMSX            Vanguard Mid Capitalization Index

Best Small Cap Index fund

NAESX           Vanguard Small Cap Index

Best Specialty Index Fund

VGSIX            Vanguard REIT Index

Best International/Foreign Index fund

FSIIX              Fidelity Spartan International Index Inv

VEIEX             Vanguard Emerging Mkts Stock Idx

VGTSX           Vanguard Total Intl Stock Index

Best Bond funds

VBISX             Vanguard Short-Term Bond Index

VBMFX          Vanguard Total Bond Market Index

The investor should first choose which index he wants to follow and then pick one or more of the best index funds from that particular category.

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There are various flavors of bond funds which are available in market today. The best bond funds are also the most popular ones. The best bond funds are those which are of intermediate term. These have a maturity period of somewhere between 5 years and 10 years.

The bond funds can be categorized into various categories like duration and yield. Based on duration, these funds can have maturity period from a couple of years to more than 10 years as well. Another way to differentiate the bond funds is the bond type which is held in the fund. The different bond types are municipal bonds, government bonds and corporate bonds.

Below tables give the best bond funds based on their returns in duration of 3 months, 1 year, 3 years and 5 years.

Top Performers – 3 Month

Top Performers – 1 Year

Top Performers – 3 Year

Top Performers – 5 Year

Depending upon your requirement, you can choose any or multiple best bond funds.

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Most people do not have the expertise and the time to track the market. It is therefore impossible for them to get the maximum out of their retirement savings. The mutual fund industry has understood this problem of public and most asset management companies have launched a number of target date retirement funds to help people.

How do these retirement funds work?

This is pretty simple. Each asset management company has launched a series of retirement funds having a specific target date. For example Vanguard has different retirement funds called Vanguard target Retirement 2010, Vanguard Target retirement 2020, 2030 and so on. Similar plans are available through other companies like T Rowe, Oppenheimer etc.

All the person has to do is to choose a plan which is nearest to his retirement age. For example, person X has his retirement age as 2018, and then he can easily choose a retirement fund which has target date of 2020. All these funds have a mix of equity and bonds depending upon the time of maturity.

If you look at the past performance of these retirement funds, Vanguard target retirement funds have performed the best of the lot. They have received the highest rating from Morning Star. Their fees are also less compared to other fund houses. Other competitor of vanguard which has performed well is T Rowe. The results of Oppenheimer have been the worst during past 1 year due to which it got the lowest rating. On top of that, the fees are the highest for Oppenheimer.

Target-date funds can make retirement investing easier and more manageable for savers. The easiest method is to choose from one of the best retirement funds and concentrate on your work instead of worrying about your portfolio.

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There are hundreds of international mutual funds which are available in the market today and one can buy any of the flavors available. There are funds which focus on one country like Russia, China or India or a typical type of countries like emerging markets like India and China. There are others which focus on a specific geographical area like Latin America, Middle East or Emerging Asia etc.

Here are the top performing international funds based on their returns in 3 months, 1 year, 3 years and 5 years.

Top Performers – 3 Month

Top Performers – 1 Year

Top Performers – 3 Year

Top Performers – 5 Year

Based on your choice of duration, you should be able to pick and choose one or more of these best international funds.

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