How to Create an Investment Plan

Creating a viable investment plan requires a little more than simply establishing a savings account and buying a few random shares of stocks. In order to structure a plan that is right, it is important to understand what you want to accomplish with the investments, define how to reach those goals and evaluate different types of investment options to decide which ones will aid in the achievement of those goals. The good news is that it is never too late to create and implement a personal investment plan and begin creating a nest egg for the future.

Steps

1. Determine your goals for the future. A carefully structured investment plan can be a means of achieving long-term or short-term goals. For example, one goal may be to generate funds for a child's college education, using returns from certain types of investments. Alternatively, another goal may be to create a portfolio that generates income for use during retirement. Knowing what you want to accomplish will

How to Build a Diversified Portfolio

Some of the main keys to long term wealth building are diversification and sticking with a plan. Consider the following when determining what to do with your serious, long term money.

Steps

1. Create an investment plan.
   
2. Stick with your investment plan - If you adjust your investment plan, do it for the right reasons, such as a change in the long-term outlook for one of your investments or the realization that an investment no longer meets your goals.
   
3. Diversify and rebalance - By spreading your money among a variety of investments that may rise and fall at different times, you'll avoid taking those big "hits" that your entire portfolio could suffer when one asset class is hit hard. You will also need to "rebalance" your holdings occasionally to make sure the

How to Finance Investment Property

If you want to be one of the thousands of people who own commercial or residential commercial real estate, you will need know how to finance investment property expenses including your property loan and sometimes renovation expenses. You can easily do this by having good credit, knowing where to find financing and being prepared with the proper paperwork.

Steps

1. Run your credit history to make sure you are in a position to secure financing. Follow up with correcting any mistakes on your credit report.
   
2. Fund your investment property with your own monetary resources.
   
   • While it is a high-cost venture, financing with your own capital leaves you with fewer people or entities to answer to and less red tape to go through.
     

How to Invest Like an Index Fund

Investing is thought to be a very demanding task that needs years of training and higher education. This is true for big and complex transactions, but it is not true for most of the time. It takes ten minutes to build a portfolio that tracks major indices like index funds. Yet, many companies charge fees for such funds.

Steps

1. Choose an index you like. You could choose S&P 500, for example. It is the most followed index in the US stock market.
   
2. Try to get a list of the biggest components of that index by size. In other words, what are the biggest companies in the S&P 500? (Decide how you are going to determine size by the way. Are you going to go with market capitalization?
   
3. Pick the biggest ten companies. General Electric and Exxon Mobile will most likely be in every index

How to Invest Small Amounts of Money Wisely

Investing isn't just for the wealthy. If you have a few thousand or even less than a hundred dollars saved, here are some suggestions on how to make the most of it.
Note: This article assumes that you're looking for something more lucrative than high-yield savings accounts and CDs.

Steps

1. Set aside a small allowance for investing. Do this first and foremost, even if you can only set aside a few dollars out of every paycheck at first. Even $5 per week will add up to an additional $260 per year.
   
2. Next, decide whether to Invest More or Pay off any high interest debt and build up an emergency fund

How to Choose the Best Forex Software

The most successful Forex brokers, investors, and traders waste no breath in telling the fledgling player in the Forex market that the success is in the system. Unfortunately, finding the system that works the best for you is sometimes as difficult as choosing the best Forex software to use when you are actively involved in the foreign currency exchange arena. Here are three steps to follow when it comes time for choosing the best forex software.

Steps

1. Pick the right software to begin with. Nearly all of the forex software products available on the market offer live online forex trading features, but how will you know which one is the best application for you? The easiest answer to that comes from knowing your needs and level of skill with currency exchange. You need to choose the software that will be the easiest for you to navigate and utilize to the best of

How to Trade Forex Online

Trading forex (foreign exchange) is highly risky. Due to the leverage available, with very little money down you can have big gains, but also big losses. In addition, there is financial friction, since you are paying fees in the form of the spread. Only highly sophisticated investors should trade forex -- and if you're not sure what you are, then you're probably not highly sophisticated. Whatever you do, don't trade more than you can lose -- because odds are, you will lose everything.

Steps

1. Research the best ways to invest. Forex is the biggest financial market in the world. It's bigger than the US stock market, because the daily turnover has now exceeded 4 Trillion US dollars. First understand that you, the retail investor are not going to move the market, the banks trade in multimillion's, most retail traders won't be doing so.
   

How to Avoid Day Trading Mistakes

Day trading for beginners is like lion taming, except more expensive. It's a risky and challenging pursuit: buying stocks and selling them again in the same day, making money off tiny fluctuations in the price of a stock over only a 12 hour period. For many years, the tools of day trading were not available to the average investor — real time stock results, analysis tools and access to instant trades (without the help of a broker). Today, with high-speed connections, anybody can try to day trade. For those of stout heart, here are some common pitfalls to avoid.

Steps

1. Learning to day trade. The first step for any day trading beginner is to learn the game with a qualified, actively trading consultant - coach. Learning the game of day trading stock with a coach, like Federer learning to be the best in tennis and Woods in the game of golf, you need to learn the winners game

How to Become a Trader

There are two main kinds of traders, those who deal with their own money, and those who trade with the money of an employer. There are also important differences to each of these, which finance professionals are quick to point out. However, for someone who simply wants to become a trader, meaning to facilitate trades on the stock market (or, colloquially, on Wall Street) some basic guidelines apply. Here's how to become a trader and get the best chance at managing a greater amount of capital in financial stock markets.

Steps

1. Acquire your own capital. This is the first step to actually being able to trade in financial markets. Finance pros always recommend distinguishing money that you use for trading from money that you may need in the short term, in order to prevent some distinct budget problems.
   
2. Access a broker. In order to start trading, you'll need access to the stock market. Unless you already

How to Pick a Quality Stock for Investment

There are certain characteristics that identify quality stocks for investment purposes. This entry discusses some of the factors that may be used to identify winning stocks.

Steps

1. A good place to start when looking for a stock to purchase is the list of top percentage gainers for that particular day. These lists are found on USA Today, CNN.Money, and elsewhere.
   
2. From this list, emphasize stocks close to or higher than $10/share. Stocks much under $10 are generally of lower quality. Although one can purchase more shares of a lower-priced stock, that doesn't necessarily mean that your chances of a successful investment are greater; in fact they may be reduced with so-called "penny" stocks. 
3. Check the latest quarter earnings report. These are easily found on the Yahoo Finance website. After

How to Avoid Investment Trading System Scams

Everybody, it seems, has an investment trading system these days. There's so much baloney in the trading system marketplace that it makes you want to follow Mark Twain's advice about how to double your money: "fold it over once and put it back in your pocket." How do you separate the few legitimate investment trading systems from the scamsters? Based on research and experience, here are the "Top 11 most common ways to spot trading system scams".

Steps

1. Think Often, they will start "improving" the system, or stop using it altogether. Especially for beginners it is a big help to gain confidence in the system if there is a winning percentage of 65% or more.
   
2. Avoid "hypothetical" trading systems - systems that have only been backtested, never actually traded in the market Insiders, like the proverbial "Them", as in "They say…" This is almost always a sign that

How to Get Started in the Stock Market

Some basic guidance from a seasoned investor who is also a financial and investment planner.

Steps

1. Try to understand why you want to invest. This is the hardest thing - looking at yourself.
   
2. Search for an area where you hold some intellectual strength. It is tough enough to make money in the markets at the best of times, so why disadvantage yourself by investing in things that you don't understand? You will have areas of expertise that fund managers don't. Use that advantage if you can. Warren Buffett describes this as his 'circle of competence'.
   
3. Do plenty of research. Then do plenty more! There is more valuable information available online than we can possibly imagine.
   
4. Learn to think independently. This is the biggest skill you can learn towards becoming a successful