Beating The Stock Market

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joanne — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 02:39:10 +0000

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Free Trial: Cramer’s Real Money Program

billy — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:23:03 +0000

The Host of Mad Money, Jim Cramer has been helping the average person learn about the stock market for a long time. He’s written several books on investing, as well as being the Chairman on TheStreet.com. I for one have made quite a bit of money listening to Jim Cramer.
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One of the ways you can follow Jim and and the rest of the the staff is at RealMoney.com. You’ll find sound, unbiased advice you can count on.
No middle man, no B.S., no delays – just a direct line to people as they share their investment strategies, stock picks and market views, all in real time. They do have a basic no fee section of the website, but if you want to know the meat-and-potato off what’s going on on Wall Street, then this is the service you want.
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I’ve been a member of The Street.com’s RealMoney program for a while and I’m not disappointed. Here’s an opportunity to try out RealMoney.com for a 14 day free trial. Click below to check it out.
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Stock Market Update

billy — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 20:29:36 +0000

The first day of trading after the labor day weekend has been very interesting. The three indicies finshed the day higher, Dow up 56 points while the S&P 500 closed at 1025.39 and the NASDAQ did the best of the three closing at 2037.77 (up 0.94%).
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That wasn’t even the most worthy news of the day, that honor goes to the price of gold, which went above $1000 for the first time in quite some time. The U.S. Dollar lost value today and with that going on, the Commodity sector gained throughout the day.
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This week will be a very telling sign of things to come in the near and distance future. Just to be on the safe side, I will be treading very carefully through it all. For those of you that want to try out a different trading technique but are afraid to do it in such trying times, here is a free fantasy stock market game that you can find out if those ideas will pan out.
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What can you lose? It’s FREE.
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Contest: Win “12 Steps To A Worry Free Retirement”

billy — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 02:13:40 +0000

We’re having our very first (but not our last) contest here at Beating The Stock Market!

The contest starts right NOW and ends on Sunday, September 30 at 12:00 noon EST.

First, the prize….one winner will receive a copy of Kiplinger’s: 12 Steps To A Worry Free Retirement.

Actual customer review:
“This book lays out what you need to know about planning your retirement using easy to understand text and charts.”

Here’s how to enter:
All you need to do to enter is post about the contest and link to this post. Leave the link to where you posted about it in a comment here so we can keep track of the entries.

Good luck!

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New Home Sales Report For July

billy — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 01:56:35 +0000

Yesterday the news came out that new home sales jumped 9.6% for the month of July. It was the fourth straight increase in sales. Sales rose to an annual rate of 433,000, up from June’s rate of 395,000. Many are saying that the bottom is definitely in and now is the time to buy, but is that really the case.
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Yes, sales are up more than 30% from the bottom in January, but nowhere near the peak of four years ago. Of course that’s was because of the inflated bubble that was created by the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sub-prime loans.
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So does this really mean that the bottom is in and we can expect the economy to turn around? I doubt it. Why I think that is because of the fact that the numbers are (I feel) are mis-leading. Many of the new home sales that have been happening in the last month or so were first-time home buyers. That’s because of the government’s incentive plan for first-time homeowners who qualify for an $8000 tax credit. That in itself is misleading on the fact of it’s a tax credit, not a rebate. Which means of you don’t have enough of tax liability, you won’t be able to write off all of the $8000.
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What does that mean for the industry? Well, home builders saw a jump in their stock price today, but will it be able to maintain those levels? I doubt that too. mainly because when the program will be terminated at the end of November. I believe the market will dry up again with sales. As it is, some builders have already seen a dip in home sales. In Arizona, A.F. Sterling Homes stated that sales in July stalled because the builder couldn’t guarantee the homes would be completed in time to qualify. The industry (real estate agents and builders) are really leaning on Congress to extend the the credit on the grounds of the sales could reverse from their current trend. As a matter of fact, Randy Agron, the vice president of A.F. Sterling Homes was quoted as saying “The real estate market is really a fragile thing. It’s not the right time to take (the tax credit) away”.
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With that in mind, do you really think the bottom is in? It has been proven in the past that when the government gets involved with trying to “save” the economy, it actually extends it by not letting the free market follow it’s natural course. With this program as well as the financial bailouts and “Cash For Clunkers”, we have three major industries being manipulated within the American economy.
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All I can say is…hang on, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

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Solar Power Stocks Take A Beaten

billy — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:58:49 +0000

In the last week or so the solar power companies have been getting down graded from several different analysts. The reasons vary from one another, but the message is still the same… stay away from the sector. The alternative energy sector has made some good gains in recent months, but then again almost everything has made gains since the lows of March.
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The leaders in the sector have really taken a turn down from where they were just a few months ago. First Solar Inc. (FSLR:NASDAQ) was as low as $100 in March climbing nearly 100% to it recent high of over $200 in May and has really taken a beaten since then.
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That’s not the only solar companies that has fallen out of flavor with the analysts. Typically when the price of oil starts to rise, the alternative energy sector gets some headwinds because of the fact that it makes cost effective sense to invest in the solar and wind power stocks. The problem here seems to be that the competitiveness of the sector has gotten really tight causing companies to cut back on their own pricing to compete with others in their market. Each of these companies are trying to get a bigger market share and to do so, pricing and profit will be taking a back seat at the moment.
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Here at Beating The Stock Market, I’ve been very positive about the alternative energy sector and have made plenty of money in trading these stocks. When news like this comes out from several different sources, I tend to stay away from the sector. Too much negative views on a sector does not sit well for me and I will wait and see before I jump back on board with solar or wind power stocks.

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Are You Ready To Take Adventage Of The Markets

billy — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:36:17 +0000

Typically the months of August and September are the two least to make gains. As people are going on their last minute vacation before the summer is over, the stock markets seem to take a break. The volume is lower than any other time of the year.
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As you can see by the last couple of weeks, the markets have seen a stall in gains compared to the other four months. The overall markets are holding to their levels, but quite few good stocks have come down from where they were just a little while ago. I don’t expect them to stay there very long. At the present time, the markets are showing that they are at a good resistance level. I also see that it’s more of a bull than a bear scenario going on.
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The correction in the markets seem to be happening on the individual stock levels, so I’m getting ready to go all-in. I see some of the companies that I’ve been recently coming down to levels I consider a good entry point. If the stocks do fall back after I start building a position, that won’t be a problem since I always buy in increments.
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So my question to you is… Are you ready to get in (if you’re sitting on the sidelines), or build a bigger position in the companies that you own already? Do your research on those companies now, so when the time is right to get in, you will know which ones will be a great investment. If you are up more than 20% in a stock already, you might want to take profit now and get back in after the pull-back.
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If you’re looking for some free advice or trading programs to help improve your trading, please check out the free trial of Jim Cramer’s Action Alert and/or Trading Solutions free trading program.
Due diligence and research is vital to surviving in the markets, so be disciplined in your trading style and remember… Happy Trading.

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Trading Solutions That Can Help

billy — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:00:11 +0000

The three indicies lost just over 1% each on Tuesday. The DOW slipped 96.50 points to close at 9241.45, the S&P 500 shed 12.75 dropping below 1000, and the NASDAQ finished the day at 1969.73 after losing 22.51 points. There were some great gains in some stocks even with the down day.
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The financial sector was the worst of the bunch today. I’m glad that I’ve pulled out of that sector a couple of days ago. I’ll wait for a healthy pull-back and jump in again.
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When I sit on the sidelines waiting to jump back in, I sometimes use the time to try some investing programs I’ve come across.
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One that I recently checked out is the free analysis trading software package from Trading Solutions. It can learn patterns from historical data and allows you to create trading systems that suggest when to buy and sell. The software works with stocks, futures, currencies (FOREX) and many other financial instruments.
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Download Trading Solutions and try it for free. Let me know what you think. As I continue playing around with it, I’ll report back on how I like it.

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Penny Stock Alerts

billy — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:56:00 +0000

If you spend any time researching the companies that you are thinking of trading stock in, I’m sure you’ve seen the advertisements, the pop-up windows and the e-mails informing you of different websites that will give you alerts on penny stocks that they believe that will make you some great gains.
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The only problem that I see with that is you really don’t know the person who is running the website. Quite a few of them are actually fund managers that use you to help pump up the price of the stock to help them make more money. Of course I’m not saying that all of them are like that but you need to be aware of you might be dealing with.
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I myself subscribe to many different alerts from websites just to see what is going on. In many cases I watch their picks to see if they are going to be right or wrong. Unfortunately many of the picks don’t really go anywhere after the initial jump. How I see it, many of these website/traders position themselves in a company, start hyping it up that it will do great for their readers/subscribers. As the price goes up they start scaling out their position. Most of the stocks that I’ve been watching over the last two months from these alerts would have lost me thousands of dollars. Don’t get me wrong, I would have made money on some of the picks, but not as much as I would have lost.
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The latest stock that I’ve seen being pushed is Biocentric Energy Holdings (OTC:BEHL.PK). I saw this being pushed by several different websites. I figured that this too would be another pump-and-dump fiasco as I’ve seen before. The stock price was $0.023 per share when I first received the alert, after three positive days where it went to $0.07 I was waiting for the price to fall. To my surprise, it still hasn’t started to lose momentum. As of this morning, the price per share was to to $0.14, a gain of over 500% in just a week or so.
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I’ve talked about it before and said that buying penny stocks can be very rewarding, but at the same time you can lose a ton of money. Be careful when you trade penny stocks, even more so than you would with bigger cap companies.

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Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd (NYSE:AEM)

billy — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 19:31:48 +0000

Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd is up and running again today after they reported their second quarter earnings report. I’ve spoken about them in the past in regards to having a position and using a technique referred to as channel trading..
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Well so much for that idea now that the company has posted some good results and given some (in my opinion) great guidance. It will be some time before I’ll know what their new trading range will be. On top of all the news that AEM released, there have also been several analysts that raised the target price for Agnico Eagle.
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Yesterday when I saw the price dropping I put in a limit buy order at $52 per share. Unfortunately the low of the day was $52.17. I figured that I’ll just get the shares today at even a lower price, but when I was watching Mad Money with Jim Cramer, he had the CEO of Agnico Eagle on to discuss the report. I knew at that point the shares would go up in the pre-market and continue to do so throughout the day. So I had to put in a limit buy in for 54.00 (hoping that it would be a good bid) before the market opened and was lucky that it did trigger. I think we’ll see some great thing from this company in the next few quarters and I expect to make some great gains with this stock.
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Their two newest mines, Kittila and Lapa have achieved commercial production as well as their other mine Meadowbank and will be operational in the first quarter of 2010. If you haven’t jumped into Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd., do your research and maybe this can be a winner for you and your portfolio.
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Second quarter 2009 highlights include:
- Record Production – record gold production of 119,053 ounces. First gold poured at Pinos Altos in July
- Good Cost Performance – LaRonde, Goldex and Lapa achieve good
minesite cost performance
- Commercial Production At Lapa And Kittila – commercial production
achieved as of May 1 at both mines
- Remaining Two New Gold Mines On Schedule – Pinos Altos and Meadowbank remain on schedule for initial production in third quarter 2009 and first quarter 2010, respectively
- Growth profile bolstered – expected after-tax internal rate of return (”IRR”) of 76% at Goldex expansion and 17% at Pinos Altos expansion at Creston Mascota
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Happy trading.

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