Stocks – Page 2

Give Stocks or Create Registry for Christmas, Birthday, Wedding, or Graduation

We have spoken about various investment apps lately but not about giving and receiving stocks from friends and family. While people have done this for years to make some of the most rewarding gifts for someone’s future a new platform makes it much easier. SparkGift lets you give stocks and index funds to your friends and family.

You can gift stocks and index funds, including fractional shares, ranging from $20 to $2,000 in as long as it takes to fill up a cup of coffee. This works similar to purchasing a gift card where you select your stock or index funds and send it to your recipient who redeems the gift for their stock held by SparkGift.

The recipient of the investment pays no fees. SparkGift charges the sender a fee of $2.95 plus 3%. If you use SparkGift for this Christmas season they will charge only $2.95 for gifts of up to $100.
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Will Financial Doom Hit the U.S. Markets?

We recently received an email from a concerned family member who warned us about an impending financial doom. This relative knows we own lots of stocks and thought we should be warned. I looked into the video they sent us warning about the Shemitah which is set to occur this month. Mostly a conspiracy theory that the US is looking toward some kind of a financial meltdown a lot worse than the market drop you saw a few weeks ago.

Here is a summary of the video that speaks of the Financial Doom predicted in September 2015:
He notes a pattern of judgments at seven-year intervals stemmed from the shemitah which basically stands for “washing away of things” such as debt. The video went back on historical records on other shemitah years since 1900 where he had some notable findings but nothing groundbreaking.
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Planning to invest in Saudi Arabia? Find out why their skyscraper could lead to economic collapse

kingdomtower saudi arabia skyscraper largest in world I have always thought the Big Building or Big Arena theory is true. When you see too many football stadiums with huge sponsorships that do not make any sense then start worrying when you see to many empty office skyscrapers being built its also time to worry. I have always wondered about the Devon Building in OKC as it sits in a city with so many already empty vacant offices. I feel they wasted too much money on that. But let’s look at Saudi Arabia.

Economists love to play with all sorts of outlandish indicators of impending economic collapse including bread prices and milk prices, prices of microchips, even the rates currently being charged by escorts in an attempt to pinpoint the time and place where the next economic meltdown will take place. Because the volume of data potentially affecting macroeconomics is so enormous, there is an infinite number of ways a skilled mathematician can rationalize the predictive model of their choosing no matter how wild it may seem. skyscrapers-economic disasters

A trend has established itself within industrialized nations for more than 140 years now and has managed to repeat itself multiple times through some of the 20th and 21st centuries’ darkest economic hours. This would be the Skyscraper Index where the location of the world’s current tallest building under construction is where financial ruin is coming next or has already arrived. Think about it.

Take a look at some of the past examples:

The Equitable Life Building, finished in New York in 1873, coincided with a 5-year recession.

The Empire State Building first broke ground in 1930 but was planned well before Wall Street crashed in 1929 and was built as the world sank into the Great Depression.

The World Trade Center and the former Sears Tower were both built around the time of the oil crisis in the early ’70s. [Read more…]

Facebook IPO opened up to E*Trade Account holders

If you were around when Google shook the IPO world you would know back then it was quite the advantage to have an E*Trade account. The Google IPO went for $85.00 and is now at $612. Just owning a few shares would have made you a happy investor. It is not everyday that the average Joe gets a chance at buying the initial public offering of a big company so why not at least give it a try. Their is one difference with the Facebook and Google IPO. The Google IPO was more of an auction listing and this Facebook IPO seems to have a limit or maximum amount you will purchase it for. They give you a range and you decide. It will most likely be set at a price of $35 next week when it goes live. Another difference is the minimum amount. Google did not have one and Facebook asks for a minimum amount of 50 shares. Basically that means you better have around $1,750 to begin to play this game on the stock market.

This is an aggressive growth investment so people such as Warren Buffett will not be on this bandwagon. It is a huge risk and there are lots of naysayers on this upcoming IPO. It is hard to say if it will be successful or not in the long term but I can guarantee in the short-term it looks to have a big following and lots of likes.

Signing up for this IPO through E*Trade is not exactly what you would imagine. You need to answer a few questions first and you can’t answer them like a beginner. One of the questions to look out for from the SEC is “Of the total amount of your investable assets, what portion will this investment represent?” If you answer more than 50% I doubt you be accepted in this IPO. It will also ask you “Given the lenth of your trading experience and the frequency of your trades, how would you consider the extent of your overall investment experience and knowledge?” I answered Good and was disqualified during the Google IPO days. Or maybe I answered Limited but the answer is most likely Excellent. They are just watching out for you as an individual investor not to get yourself caught up in something too big for your wallet or your mortgage.
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Who will benefit from the Facebook IPO?

The Facebook IPO could be a real thing as early as next month! Facebook now boasts more than 800 million users, but its investors make up a much more exclusive group. With the company expected to go public in mid-2012 at a valuation of $80 billion, these early investors stand to cash in on the social network’s success. In the slides that follow, meet the angels, venture capitalists, and global investors who have made big bets on Facebook.

Peter Thiel

Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist and entrepreneur, invested in Facebook in 2004 as an angel investor. Thiel also serves on Facebook’s board of directors. He’s a co-founder of PayPal, which he sold to eBay in 2002. Thiel also heads up the Founders Fund with PayPal partners Ken Howery and Luke Nosek.

Reid Hoffman

Reid Hoffman is an angel investor in Facebook and many other companies, including Flickr, Last.fm, Ning, and Zynga. Hoffman is a partner at Greylock and co-founder and executive chairman at LinkedIn.

Jim Breyer

Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer invested in Facebook in April 2005, and also serves on the company’s board. Breyer ranked No. 1 on this year’s Forbes Midas List of top 10 investors.

Mark Pincus

Mark Pincus is the founder and CEO of Zynga, the world’s leading social game developer. Pincus invested in Facebook in 2005.

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Scottrade Review

Scottrade is a piece of trading software which provides you with three different trading platforms: Scottrade, Scottrader, and Scottrade Elite, so it facilitates a wide range of trades. It also offers training support for everyone, from beginners to expert traders. It may not have level 2 software but it does include columns for both Comtex and Dow Jones, and level two quotes. The basic trading plan provides basic quotes and research tools. It is among the best of tools for trading with large stocks, but it is not without its disadvantages too.

Online, this trading team has many investment calculators on their website and so they equip you with the information you need for a good trading strategy. They even provide their clients with free trading seminars to help you to get grips even with complex markets. In terms of the charts and information provided, Scottrade compares well with other brokers such as E*Trade and TD Ameritrade, both of whom are much more expensive. Just as they do, the trading team provides traders with the option to save their chart settings, which can have fundamental and technical indicators incorporated. One downside, though, is that their charts do not offer traders a PE history indicator.

Scottrade’s tools are unfortunately nothing out if the ordinary. The stock screener online gives the opportunity to screen 32 different categories, but one thing it doesn’t allow you to screen for a specific market cap. There are a few other options not available here that are standard in most trading software which costs more than this specific trading tool.

On the good side, Scottrade gives frequent stock market updates with links to Reuter, MarketEdge, and Standards & Poor’s so you are always working with the most up to date market information. They also have good trader support, by telephone or email or through more than four hundred branches throughout the US. Unfortunately, though, they do not offer a 24-hour help service. To mitigate against this, some of their Brokerage special features include Smart Text, which explains all the charts in simple to understand language that beginners will find really useful.

For standard stock and options trades they compare to Ameritrade and E*Trade. You can usually get the best price possible with them as their site is usually fast and reliable. They have now updated their system to accept electronic funding or wire transfers to make the whole process easier, too.

Registration is through an easy online process. You are then sent a conformation email. Having completed the sign-up, you can instantly fund your account via Money Direct. Scottrade will allow your account to be instantly funded, probably as soon as you have read the email!
The advantages offered by this trading company are numerous, one of the main ones being the cost benefit. You can start with just $500 and that gives you access to wide range of investments on international markets, with low margin rates.

Unfortunately, there is also a downside to Scottrade, especially the necessity to use different platforms for trading stocks and options. A big disadvantage is that this software cannot be used to FOREX trading. Also, there is no Live Chat option for when you have a problem.