Archive for the 'Stock Market' Category

Bill Gates, founder and chairman of Microsoft, Inc (MSFT), has built the ultimate business system. For those of you wanting financial freedom take note.

As junior at Harvard University he and childhood friend took a an already developed technology and built it into the world’s number 1 operating system. Number 1 by a long shot, over 99% of computers worldwide run the Windows operating system in one form or another (or something like that statistic). He then got people to work for him, went public with his company, figured out how to ingrain the Windows system on every computer, and has been the richest man in the world (according to Forbes) for the last 12 consecutive years.

Now after 20 years Bill Gates will be removing himself from the day to day duties of Microsoft to attend to some of his other passions. Family and philanthropy. At 50 years old Gates not only has one of the most powerful companies in the world, is the richest person in the world, he also runs, with his wife Melinda Gates, the worlds biggest charity foundation. The William and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Although he will remain chairman of Microsoft he will continue to allow financial matters to be handled by fellow Harvard Classmate and CEO Steve Ballmer and will slowly allow Ray Ozzie to take over chief software architect. The shift is said to bring in a new mind with Ozzie that will allow the company to transition out of the desktop software industry and into the online arena. Bill Gates will wait out the release of Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 and stay on to help ease the transition until 2008. Also heading up the research and strategy arena will be Craig Mundie.

Gates has made it clear that these three people. Ballmer, Ozzie, and Mundie are fully capable of taking Microsoft to the next level and increasing the value of MSFT for its shareholders.

Commodities are down, stocks are down, the housing market is down. Sell, Sell, Sell!? Wrong. Don’t jump on the bandwagon of sellers and get rid of everything you have just because it’s the in thing to do.

The stock market, although driven in the long term mainly by financial facts like earnings and earnings growth in the short term it’s driven by nothing but emotions. If the chairman sounds like he’s speaking gibberish, the “investors” sell. They don’t know what it means so why not panic and get rid of your stocks until the market comes back around. Then buy.

Sure you could do this, but by the time you know it’s time to sell, it’s probably too late. Unless you can predict what Bernanke is going to say we suggest sticking with the stocks you have. Now of course if you have a lemon don’t hold onto a lemon. But if you know you’re stock, or mutual fund, or commodity is strong and shows room for growth and earnings potential then why sell?

This brings us to the point that you need to know how to analyze financials and have a good idea as to what the long term outlook of that particular asset is going to be. Once you can do this you’ll be welcoming down markets. You’ll want Microsoft stock to get buried and be there to buy buy buy, so long as you can assure yourself that market emotions are to blame for the drop in stock price and not financial outlook.

To do this you have to be able to weed through the emotionally backed news articles and get to the financial articles. We use MSFT as an example because there are a lot of articles out there shooting down the stock because of the delay in launching vista. Is this delay going to cause IBM, dell, and other PC manufacturers to bundle Linux rather than Microsoft with their computers. Probably not. (NOTE: please take this as only an example and not financial advice, please consult a financial adviser as to what stocks to buy and sell).

Our point is, when the markets go down there are deals to be had. Please educate yourself as to what emotions drive prices you’ll be better off in the financial long run.

In years past buying stock was reserved for the rich. It was expensive and difficult to track and buy stocks. Sure you could go down to your bank, talk to a certified broker, and buy some shares. But that would cost you a bundle and make any small profit you made negligible if you were to only buy even 100 shares. That means the rich would be able to get richer, buying large blocks of shares while the commoner bought only 100 shares and spent most of his or her profits on fees.

Well times have changed since the dawn of the information age. Now you can by and sell shares, portions of shares, and all for under $10. Online brokers, electronic money transfers, and electronic markets (the NASDAQ) have made the average joe a stock trader (although most are still gamblers.)

Some of the easiest places to buy stock online are:

Sharebuilder.com - you can buy partial stock by buying just $100 of a stock rather than a share block

Scott Trade - $7, easy, cheap

E-Trade - Cheap and big, you can bank, loans, make toast, almost everything

TD Ameritrade - Cheap and easy as well plus TD Waterhouse backed

Buying stocks is easy now, start your research today and begin trading in days.