Also, game stocks are notorious for a “what have you done for me lately” mentality where buyers and sellers seem to ignore any game in the pipeline and focus purely on the sales on the company’s last quarter.
For example, selling after a soft summer even though it leads into a huge Christmas season.
Real easy to get some bargains that way.
GE. Off 2% today. And mods, I know you are all experts at the legality of giving away magician’s secrets and things like that, but this thread may be asking for illegal activity. Not sure, but I think the SEC frowns on this kind of touting.
While I am an extreme novice at the stock market, how is a group of people trading regular old stock tips breaking any SEC rules?
It’s not. Unless one of those people has information about a company that is not public information (usually comes from someone who works for the company). Insider trading is bad and can get you jail time (ala Martha Stewart).
Yes, the current hype is to buy. The five-year performance tells a different story, which is fairly lackluster performance other than for a period in 2003. As a long term investment, it’s likely not the best choice. If you wish to try your luck at market timing, perhaps it’s the stock for you. It’s all pretty much a crapshoot, but you can minimize the risk by investing in solid performers over the long haul, not flash-in-the-pan flyers.
All the information in this thread is in the public domain and is not considered insider training.
As already been pointed out, a stocks price already reflects all information currently known about that stock. That’s why insider trading is illegal. It allows individuals to take advantage of information not known to the rest of the market.
This is my position on the stock market as well. Therefore, unless you’re some sort of psychic, there is no reliable way to pick a stock that will outperform the market average. Most stocks of any reasonably sized company will have been thoroughly researched by people who do this for a living, not a hobby. They will make their own valuation, considering future opportunities, past performance, risk, etc. and decide what price they think is reasonable. Combine the individual valuations of many analysts and you get the current market price.
Reading up a few annual reports, SEC filings, and news reports on Yahoo isn’t going to give you magic insight into whether or not this stock is undervalued. Everyone else is reading the exact same stuff, and many of those people have advanced degrees in Finance and years of 60hr/wk experience doing this sort of analysis.
Yes, you can beat the market, you can also get beaten by the market.
I say, if you are investing in your future, and you have a relatively small stake, the first thing you should do is diversify, that means mutual funds. I prefer index funds because they generally have the lowest cost, since there’s no fatcat analyst team to pay for, they just follow a formula.
If you are investing for fun and amusement, it’s a different story. Research to your heart’s content, buy the stocks of companies you like. With only $400 though, you will eat up a lot of principal in fees if you do much more than buy and hold.
I recall vividly a chart from my finance classes showing performance before and after the announcement of a stock split, in comparison to the market, for all stocks announcing a split. Before the split, huge runup, after the split, flat as a pancake. The only thing a split tells you is that the stock HAD a big increase in price recently. “Past performance is no indicator of future results.” No cite, sorry, just my memory from 10 years ago.
Even here, you need to do your research. Some firms costs on their index funds rival costs on managed funds. Vanguard, Fidelity and T. Rowe Price are known for keeping their index fund costs down.
Market timing can work, but not usually with thinly-traded stocks. Take GE: you may notice that GE trades within a certain rage of pricing- say from $30-$38/share. You can wait till GE tends toward the lower end of the range, and buy. You then have to have patience and wait till the stock moves up. This might happen in 6 months or 6 years-you will have to assess if you can wait such a long time. Of course, GE does pay dividends, which offsetts some of the risk. But in general, the best think for you would be a no-load index fund.
Well, as long as it is all on the up and up- VLO, BUY BUY BUY!
(owns it)
You see, if someone is pushing a stock on a board like this, they might have ulterior motives, so although it might not be illegal to give that kind of advice, it is criminally stupid to take it.
In the long run this is more true than the short run. Perhaps you are a buy and hold investor. In that case, you should consider a no load mutual fund. Vanguard is a nice one.
Whose valuations can be all over the map. At any time, I can find you a pundit to tell you to buy, hold or sell any given stock. Real experts, these. Cheesesteak is engaging in one of my favorite fallacies: the idea that the average of what a bunch of people think somehow reflects reality.
Annual reports, meh. I have a pile of them, unopened. Nice photography and prose to make you think the company is the next great thing. Look at the numbers. News reports? Most of the moves I trade on never make the news. And as far as spending 60 hours a week and having degrees and all that, well guess what. Funds that lose money or underperform have those guys too. Sometimes all you have to do is keep your eyes open. How many of these guys actually eat at McDonald’s for lunch? Well I do, and when I noticed their food was improving in both quality and variety, I got in, and all I had to do was eat a sandwich.
But in the long run you will do better by being in the market than in any other investment. With a little education and common sense, you can beat the market.
Yeah, a formula that GUARANTEES you will do no better and no worse than the market itself. So which is it? The experts are going to beat you, but don’t pay them because they aren’t worth the money? Excuse me?
Other funds, well some beat the market, and some don’t, and some flat out lose you money, and some have all kinds of fees and crap that hide the fact that you aren’t doing as well as you think you are, so there is the problem of choosing a mutual fund.
In other words, become shark bait. This is why I advise not investing such a small amount directly in stocks. Wait, and build up some cash while you learn.
I beat the S&P on a regular basis. I am beating it by more than a percent this year alone so far, and I have a fair amount in the money market earning interest, so not only am I beating the S&P, I am doing it with more safety. Should the market take a plunge I don’t have to cry about it, I can lick my chops and sink the cash back in.
I have a lot of fun. I spend about two hours a day on my stocks. I do monitor them every single day, and spend time just reading. If you can’t make that investment in time and learning, then yeah, leave it to the experts. Or jump on in as a novice and impove MY edge. 
And don’t forget, some people just seem to have the knack for it. It is some combination of interest in the subject, persistance, and intuition that is hard to quantify. You won’t know until you try.
I trade like 15% of my portfolio in this manner, and it is what gives me the edge.
That depends. With market valuations at record highs, putting everything into a fund could be suicide. Of course, you won’t get much interest on $400 either, but at least it won’t go anywhere and you can add to it out of your earnings until you feel you have the capital and knowledge to do some actual trading. With %400, if you even pretend to diversify by buying individual issues, say you buy four stocks. That is eight transactions at $10 each. You just lost $80, or 20% of your money, right off the top. And actually I think most discount brokerages have a $1000 minimum to open an account, but even so. You need about 5 grand to start, as I said before. Get 5 thousand, pick five stocks you like in different industries (energy, finance, medical, mining, retail for example) and you will be in much more reasonable shape.
Good luck! 
Oh, and I would add, that if you have the financial discipline to increase your savings from $400 to $5000, you might just have what it takes to be an investor.
Just checked. For the year so far:
S&P 500: +4.94 %
Me: +6.48 %
Large Cap 42.88%
Mid/Small Cap 10.41%
Cash 18.33%
International 28.37%
The international is a fund that is up 6%, so it dragged me down a little.
The cash is MM checking geting a boring 3.7
I don’t have a PHd. In anything.