Money & Investing - Banks.com

The Internet offers a great way for you to improve your investing success. You can use online brokerages to place investment orders and track your investing progress. This works whether you invest in stocks, currencies, funds, commodities, bonds or some other financial instrument. And there are some online tools that can help you become a better informed investor. Stock Trading To Go offers these 5 tools that can help you invest with more success:

1. Roboform helps you access all of your investment accounts with a master password, and with prefill.
2. Free Stock Ticker lets you make a ticker customized to your stock investments — do it on your desktop in real time, if you want.
3. Google Alerts provides you with new information as soon as it is published online. A great way to keep tabs on the fundamentals of companies and other investments that you follow.
4. Stock Quote Search allows you to add SeekingAlpha to your browswer toolbar. Makes it easy to get current stock quotes.
5. FiresStox represents yet another addition to your browser (FireFox) toolbar. This allows you to get detailed investment portfolio information.

There are other tools that I find useful as well. Wikinvest provides analysis and real time stock quotes that can help you with research. Piqquem and Inner8 are both investing social networking Web sites that can help you contact other investors, as well as get interesting insight on different stocks.

No matter your investment style, it is possible to get some help with investing when you use online tools. The Web has truly made it possible for nearly anyone to invest with more success.

Disclaimer: I am not an investment professional. Nothing in this piece or on this Web site should be construed as investment advice. Before making investment decisions, do your own research and/or consult with an investment professional. All investment comes with the risk of loss. You are responsible for your own investment decisions and any loss that may result from your decisions.

If you want to help limit losses when investing, stop loss orders can be great ways exit positions before they lead to substantial losses. Stop loss orders can be used with positions on a number of markets; they are useful beyond stocks to include currencies, funds and other traded financial instruments. However, stop loss orders are not fullproof (nothing is when it comes to investing). Stock Trading To Go has some pointers on the successful use of stop loss orders:

1. Stop loss orders are not meant for active trading. If you are constantly checking the charts for the tiniest changes and using hourly technical analysis to make your trades, stop loss orders really aren’t very useful. You’ll just exit positions anyway.
2. Hidden fees. Some investment brokers will charge you different rates for stop loss orders. Make sure you understand what they are.
3. Stop loss orders do not always go through. Realize that sometimes a stop loss order is not going to be filled. Sometimes the price just drops too fast, or it has fallen below level in after-hours trading.
4. Avoid premature selling. Make sure that there is a reasonable amount of space between the current stock price and your stop loss level. Volatility (especially now) can lead to premature selling if a price dips during the day, but recovers by the end.
5. Use common increments for your stop loss order. You are more likely to have your order fulfilled if your stop loss is placed at a level that is a multiple of 5 (i.e. $50, $35.65).
6. If you are new to investing, use a stop market order. Avoid the stop limit order until you are more practiced.

Disclaimer: I am not an investment professional. Nothing in this piece or on this Web site should be construed as investment advice. Before making investment decisions, do your own research and/or consult with an investment professional. All investment comes with the risk of loss. You are responsible for your own investment decisions and any loss that may result from your decisions.

Investment services seem to abound. There are a variety of brokers, from the guy at the bank who can arrange securities transactions, to Wall Street brokers to online discount brokers. All of these professionals offer a variety investment services that can help you make money.

But beware: Some of these investment services cost enough that they eat away at your earnings. It is important to consider the investment services offered, and whether it is worth paying for these services.

Three major investment services

According to Thomas Smith, CFP, CFA and his article on Investopedia, there are three major value components when it comes to investment services:

• Administration: This is probably the component that you will most likely need the most help with. Since you are unlikely to always have direct access to markets, it can be difficult to take care of the administrative aspects of investing. This also includes such items as compiling tax information (you can do it yourself, but it can take for-ev-er). Plus, professional administration can help you stay on top of regulations. Compare administration fees and commissions. You would be surprised at how these vary from brokerage to brokerage.
• Portfolio management. Acquiring investments is different from managing them. Administration services generally do not include investment portfolio management. This is something you can do yourself. It does take time and effort to build a good portfolio that is balanced and allocated for your needs, but it is possible that you can do it fairly well. Smith points out that many “professionals” are not terribly versed in portfolio management.
• Advice. Many people pay for investment advice. However, this is probably — in Smith’s view — the easiest area for you to get good value by taking care of it yourself. From investing books to information and news online, there are many resources available that can help you make good investment decisions. Just be wary of where you get your information.

With some careful planning and by choosing which investment services you pay for and deciding to do some of it yourself, you can build a good investment portfolio that isn’t devoured by fees and commissions.

Disclaimer: I am not an investment professional. Nothing in this piece or on this Web site should be construed as investment advice. Before making investment decisions, do your own research and/or consult with an investment professional. All investment comes with the risk of loss. You are responsible for your own investment decisions and any loss that may result from your decisions.

Tags: investment portfolio, investment services, investing blog, portfolio management,
investment advice, investments