Improving Returns by Finding Good Values in Stocks Feb 15, 2010 James Hutchinson With thousands of stocks to choose from when building an investment portfolio, it is helpful to narrow searches for stocks based on criteria selected by the investor. Stock screeners, such as the one provided by Yahoo Finance, allow investors to trim the list of stocks by preset criteria, which can be adjusted by the user to find the stock that he believes will be the best investments. Since different investors have different goals and ideas, the screener providers multiple methods of discovering stocks. Investors can focus on dividend yields, volatility, analysis recommendations or company performance. Users can screen by multiple factors. Once they narrow the number of stocks by using one criterion, the second screening can drill down to select a smaller list of appropriate investments. Screening Stocks by Category Investors can use the screener to look for stocks…

Investing in the stock market is no bed of roses and investing in the options market can be even more complicated if you don’t really know what you’re doing. I have found over the years that your ordinary average individual investor has a more difficult time understanding the options market than they really need to because when you get right down to it- investing in options doesn’t have to be all that complicated. In this article I would like to discuss one simple options strategy that you can use right away. When I’m done I hope you’ll understand that options investing doesn’t have to be as complicated as many people would have you believe. So let’s get right down to it and discuss the naked call option. I like this strategy just because it has the word naked in it and any time you can bring anything remotely lewd into…

Investing in the stock market is pretty complicated but what most individual investors find even more complicated is investing using stock options And that’s really very unfortunate because stock options aren’t as complicated as most people think they are, and certainly not as complicated as most financial newsletters or financial gurus, or even the government would have you believe. In this article today I’m going to discuss one simple options strategy that you can use to profit that isn’t very difficult at all and can be a lot of fun to play around with. What strategy am I talking about? Well I’m talking about the straddle today and I don’t mind saying so. Basically you use a straddle when you think that the stock of a company is going to move dramatically either up or dramatically down… but, you’re not sure exactly which direction the actual stock is going to…

Most people think that investing in the stock market is incredibly risky. After all, they think, if you make just one or two bad moves then suddenly you can see a lifetime of very careful savings evaporate in the blink of an eye. Fortunately there are steps you can take to make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen and that’s what I want talk about in this article today. I’m going to talk about how you can use options to hedge against the possibility of losing most of your money and stock market. One popular way to protect yourself is to use options on market indexes to hedge against your portfolio’s market risk. As I’m sure you know, stocks have two main types of risks involved with owning them; their own company risk and the market risk. By company risk, I mean things that affect the specific company such…

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E uropean stock markets won some respite Monday ahead of a meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Brussels, where the Greek debt crisis will inevitably top the agenda. Public holidays in Asia, the United States and Canada kept volumes low on markets elsewhere Monday. The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares closed up 25.02 points, or 0.5 per cent, at 5,167.47 while Germany’s DAX rose 10.71 points, or 0.2 per cent, at 5,511.10. The CAC-40 in France was 11.27 points, or 0.3 per cent, higher at 3,610.34. The New York and Toronto stock exchanges were closed Monday, as were other major North American markets while the United States celebrated Presidents Day and several Canadian provinces, including Ontario and Alberta, had holidays. And with Wall Street closed Monday, investors held back from launching a new attack on the euro, which remained steady over the day around the $1.36 (U.S.) mark. Last week, at the height of the Greek…

A top Saudi energy official expressed serious concern Monday that world oil demand could peak in the next decade and said his country was preparing for that eventuality by diversifying its economic base. Mohammed al-Sabban, lead climate talks negotiator, said the country with the world’s largest proven reserves of conventional crude is working to become the top exporter of energy, including alternative forms such as solar power. Saudi Arabia was among the most vocal opponents of proposals during the climate change talks in Copenhagen. And al-Sabban criticized what he described as efforts by developed nations to adopt policies biased against oil producers through the imposition of taxes on refined petroleum products while offering huge subsidies for coal — a key industry for the United States. Al-Sabban said the potential that world oil demand had peaked, or would peak soon, was an “alarm that we need…