To all the NT Investors that play the stock market Vol. E*Trade ..

[cjmoney]

Originally Posted by fortheloveofthegame8

Originally Posted by vkhoj

If you're looking to get started into investing, what are some good resources to pick up some knowledge and to keep up to date with current things going on that might affect stocks, such as mergers etc.

Check out these 3 sites:

http:///Investopedia.com .... This breaks down every type of investment and anything you can imagine with investing. They have tutorials, stock simulators, exam preparations, etc ...

Finance.yahoo.com .... The main page has articles and links about all the financial news that will keep you informed of events in the financial world. Also, the most important part of the site IMO is the have a "Message Board" for every stock symbol. For example: if you type "ETFC" and click "Message Board" on the left hand side of the page ... it will take you to a message board of people discussing what they think will happen to the stock in the coming days, weeks, years, as well as all news within the company (new hires, inside buying, mergers, etc...)

cbsmarketwatch.com .... This is similar to yahoo finance, but without the message board. The homepage has a bunch of articles about financial news.

NEVER EVER go to the yahoo finance message boards. Just biased people pumping every stock. Real investors laugh at the boards, you will thank melater.

 

[lazyj10]

Originally Posted by wawaweewa

Originally Posted by LazyJ10

I would imagine you'll see some FASB interuprtations and such because of this. Basically, won't surprise me that banks will have more stringent reporting regulations because the way they could move CDOs on and off of the balance sheet.

Basically a Sarbanes Oxely, but for investment houses wouldn't surprise me.

The crazy part is how, this literally occurred over night. As soon a Standard and Poors rated a collection of these things as junk, man, did that start a fire.

This occurred overnight because everybody knew the truth for a while now.

People making 60 or 75k a year buying 500k homes. Does that sound right to you?

3 -4 years ago my father and I used to have routine conversations about how ludicrous this all was. I'm not even joking, seriously. Sub 3,000 square foot home were going for 600k in our neighborhood. You'd need to be making at least 150k to afford something like that and only the top 5% of Americans earn that much. It didn't make any sense.
The same thing is occuring with other forms of debt but on smaller scale only because the loans are smaller. If tomorrow, minimum payments on CC's were banned and one was required to either make a full payment or default on the loan , do you realize what would happen? That is the reason that they made personal bankruptcy much more difficult. It was not a coincidence that it took effect only a few years ago. Some very smart people realized that the sh** would hit the fan sooner rather than later.

Our economy is built on debt. That's not even hyperbole.

Of course it doesn't sound right to me. Makes me mad, in fact. As this was all going down in July, I was attempting to secure my own loan for my condo. Looking at the debts of some people just irritated me. People making $75k combined in the Bay Area should not be in a 900k house unless they received aninheritance or struck it well. Even then, they'd have to continue that luck to pay the mortgage and taxes without suffering.
I don't blame S&P for downgrading these "securities" as much as I blame the broker/bank/and investment bank who did no due diligence.