No, I actually invested 15,000 and it went down like crazy... Its staying at a steady pace down there and Im scared to sell it Most of the time you can make money off of it.
Out of curosity, why did you invest in HTE? This is their chart on the TSX: And second question, why did it take you so long to pull out? Their stock has been dropping for the past 5 months. A really big indicator to me is the 2 million shares that were sold on that one day in July. That was probably a mutual fund or investment company pulling out of the stock, and it all went downhill from there. Whenever you see somebody dumping 3x the average daily stock in a single trade then you really have to watch what is going on. But to answer your question, I tend into invest in: Mining / Exploration Companies - these companies generally stay at the same stock price for 10+ months at a time, but then when they make a huge discovery the stock doubles or triples in value overnight. Tech - I only invest in tech companies that I feel have room to grow. I.e. right now I refuse to put anything in Google even though their stock keeps going up. Utilities - Utility companies tend to grow at a steady rate, but they can get big gains if you find ones that operating in rapidly expanding cities.
It's not easy, but money can always be made in the market even during a recession. If you think you can just follow others and make money you are wrong. The market is just like online biz, you need to realize an opportunity and seize it before everyone else does. Why did you choose HTE, did you do valuations on the stock?
If you play the stock market for the fast money it is tricky to time the market. You have to really do your research and weigh your risk/benefit before investing. It is still one of the number one ways to get rich if you know what you are doing. I use to play the market in my single days and overall I made good profit. My biggest loss was $6,000 on the Planet Hollywood IPO. By time I got in, it was overinflated and I did not have the resources to ride the wave for a long time. I lost that much in 1 week. However, I made twice that at about the same by timing KMart when it was hitting bankruptcy. It is all about the game of timing and research and you have to be able to handle the loss if you take a hit. Now I choice to maker safer investments in Mutual Funds because there are professionals who handle the investments.
Mostly because of the dividend it was paying. I bought at I think $25.67 I think. I put a market stop in case it goes down past $22
For any kind of long term investing you should focus on the fundamental of the company and not charts. Charts are for short term speculation. Not that there's anything wrong with speculation, I just think people often confuse speculation with investing.
I would agree for very long-term investing (3+ years). But if you are looking to invest in a company for say 12-24 months, then I reference the charts as well as their financial statements, press releases, and just about everything else.
I was thinking of looking into companies that build oil refineries since the US is going to need to produce more in the near future, anybody know a way of doing this?
I would imagine the major fuel producers probably have that information in their financial records/investor prospectus. So I'd go digging through Shell, for example, and look for who manufacturers their oil refineries. I'm betting that the major companies make them themselves though.
Well you know that they can't go bankrupt or drop a whole ton which is good, but most of them are too expensive to make any profit on them.
Not if you buy on margin or trade options instead: Shell Price on NASDAQ in Jan 2007 = $68 On Margin $10,000 down + 75% margin = $40,000 = 588 shares Sell @ $80 in Nov 2007 = $47,070 - ($30,000 margin + $10,000 original) = $7,070 profit (minus broker fees of course) If you trade options you could make an even bigger profit, but a 70% return in 11 months would make me happy Especially considering that if I just left that money in a savings account it might amount to $500 in interest (even that's a bit high for most savings accounts).