I had promised that I was going to start my own thread regarding stock investments and the markets. So many things have happened since last time I was here and I really do not feel like sharing my knowledge. But a promise is a promise and there have been few people that have emailed me and supported me.

This thread will deal with investing in the stock markets. I will not discuss individual stocks but discuss ETFs like SPY, DIA, IWM and QQQQ. The one good thing about trading ETFs compared to individual stocks is the the ETFs provide instant diversification among similar companies within the same sector.

I will post more as we go along, regarding entry-price, profit-target and stop-losses. I do not think that any ETF is good or bad. It is good only if I'm making money and bad if I'm losig money.

If you have not been in the market so far, please read this as an information piece only rather than my recommendations. There is risk involved and you should know how much risk to take on any position.

Any suggestations, comments and criticisms are welcome as long as it is market related. If this thread gets out of hand and we start discussing off-topics, I'll stop posting.

Have a happy new year!!!! May 2007 bring you and your family lots of joys and riches.

so, what u recommend then. I am not going to be day trader, I just wanna buy shares.

if u just want to buy and dont spend much time researching on stocks.. go with index fund such as SPY..

if u just want tech stocks QQQQ, financials XLF....

these are etf's ... very similar to mutual funds..

and hold it for atleast few years ..

Phatte, if you work and your company has a 401 plan, put as much as you can into it and allocate 75% to a value fund and 25% to a growth fund. Most of the companies usually match a certain % too.

If you have $1000 only, buy index funds (SPY) and keep adding to it every month. Markets go up more often than they go down and if you add some money every month for the next 20 years, you should have quiet a bit by then. If you need money in 1-2 years then it is hard to say.

What I'm showing here is holding short-term from a day to weeks and sometimes months. Doing this more for short-term gain than retirement savings.

whats with ROYL... why the sell off today ????

Latoboy, not sure what's happeing with ROYL but it is very thily traded and the volatility is expected. It sucks when other companies in the industry are making new highs and this is going nowhere. I will take my losses if it closes below $3.

Technicals also suggest sell....Wanted to share charts with u all.....but could not .......it did not work the way i do in Clearstation.com .....simlpy copy paste did not work either.....any idea Emini, Latoboy??

i cant visit clearstation website .. says website not found...but iv attached a chart from another charting site.

the chart shows higher bottoms so it could suggest slight bullishness.

i see what u mean by clearstation... i got it...

attached here.

I use stockcharts.com and may be its my old computer causing the problem....but i appreciate yr prompt response Latoboy.

I was talking about the MACD trending downward and PSAR is also giving a sell signal. In addition to that, low open and low close along with increasing sell volume is not a good signal. If it goes down 13 dma, i will get out.

 

phatte ji, just like you I've used mine 1k on dpdw (buying it right above 10 day moving avg)..made few hundrends bucks last week.:))

.EGLE is going to break out today... im buying this clown.

batoboy good for you, shipping industry is hot man. The world is demanding more grain and energy and to transport it we need shipping. I bought some of coal stock PCX and CLF last week.

Within Shipping Industry, EXM and FREE look exciting for me....I will jump on EXM monday with opening Bell.

Emini, I hope u made a killing with PDO. If u did, happy for u man. ROYL Finally did some yesterday...hoping for more upside on it......

I won't be surprised if ROYL starts moving like PDO did. Another one that I had mentioned on 5/4 was CSUN, looks like no one got into that but check-out CSUN now. Last week was pretty good for me!!! With the shipping stocks I think it will out-perform other stocks but I'd rather buy those as they are breaking-out rather than chase it after a nice run up.

Eminitrader like your research...good job...I was sure bout csun i sold at 6..I knew its gonna a go around 17...take a look at these I see a big potential.... RXII, COINW, COIN, CHINA ..

Also PBR, UNH, WLP for long term .....

by the way EXM seems a better play than EGLE...

also note that EXM is reporting earnings before opening bell on monday.

8:40AM Excel Maritime Carriers beats by $0.14, beats on revs (EXM) 57.72 : Reports Q1 (Mar) earnings of $1.93 per share, $0.14 better than the First Call consensus of $1.79; revenues rose 93.9% year/year to $69.8 mln vs the $61.8 mln consensus. "Post-merger, Excel's combined fleet will be deployed in a more balanced employment approach. We will take advantage of the current strong rate environment to expand our charter coverage for 2009 and beyond to secure consistent cash flows and ongoing profitability to our shareholders, but at the same time we will always leave a part of our fleet to operate under short-term period charters or in the spot market."

my picks are DGLY, ICO, GFA.

i am going to buy shares in all 3 today.

Looks like S&P going to hit 1440 today....already got into EXM and FREE.

regarding WSCI

check out the Monday's edition of THE IBD, pg. A9, entitled, "Getting a
Grip on Demand, Metal Processing, Fabrication Firms Scramble to Serve
Growing Market."     it looks like a Great overview of the industry and its outlook.