ETF's vs Mutual Funds

By Peggy Black

Why buy mutual funds when you can be owning an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF)? Mutual funds have limited liquidity in that you can only buy and sell mutual funds at the end of the day. Plus exorbitant fees charged investors average 1.5%.

When you purchase a mutual fund you are left in the dark as to what you are getting. Fund managers only are required to disclose their holdings twice a year and that comes with a 30-60 day time delay.

The S&P 500 Index EFT was the first Exchange Traded Fund. With one trade position, one could own the entire 500 companies of the S&P 500 with the street symbol SPY.

ETF's stay very close to their inherent net asset value. If values drift too far, professional arbitrage traders will soon bring values into line. It is entirely self-policed by these mechanics.

ETFs behave just like a stock. You can enact stops, limit order and view everything in real-time if you choose.

The expenses to own an ETF is negligible. For instance, fees for SPY (S&P 500 index ETF) are pegged at 0.09 percent.

Best of all, ETFs are transparent and you always know what you are getting. You'll know exactly what the market index is composed of. There is now wondering if your ETF owns something that you did not know about.

If there is a choice between mutual funds or ETFs, one should be aware of fund management past history and direction. How do they do in a bear market? How do they perform in a bull market? Do the beat the ETF for the same investment area? - 23162

About the Author:

Find learned insight on Exchange Traded Funds and investments of any sort, read the Wall Street Journal. Most every serious investor reads it for unbiased financial news and the latest rumblings that will affect the financial future. Get free delivery of the Wall Street Journal for 80% off news stand price at Wall Street Journal Subscription

Want to know how to Invest Money?

By Winnie A. T.

Do you understand the potential that investing your money could have for you? Do you understand how much money you can make just by investing the money that you already have? Just try it now and you can see how much money you can make through investing your money.

Now that you are ready to start investing, you must to begin by learning. You won't make any money, in fact you'll probably lose money, if you don't know what you're doing. That is why you need to learn. Start by taking a course or designing your own course.

It is actually really easy to design an investing study course for yourself. Basically, you are teaching yourself. You need to first look for books about the subject you are investing in. For example if you are going to invest in bonds, you need to get books about bonds. Fortunately for you, there are lots of books on all the different kinds of investments out there. You should not have trouble finding any at your local library, Amazon.com, or in other bookstores around you.

Now you can design your plan now that you have your books. Think about how much time you can devote to studying. Devise a schedule and a plan around your studying time. Make this time just for studying investing. Study, study, and keep studying. If you can, practice on your own as well. For example, if you want to invest in stocks, you can use a stock market simulation game. With other types investments such as bonds, you can keep track of your own mock investments with a spreadsheet.

Now you should have a plan. It should be a concrete plan that you can follow easily and that is effective for you. Adjust as necessary. If you ever come across something you don't understand, keep studying until you completely understand it. The learning process is especially important in the investment process.

Once you've learned an amount of investing you feel confident about, start investing. You don't have to be an expert, you just want to start investing because the longer you wait the less money you'll be able to make. - 23162

About the Author:

Learning how to invest money isn't easy, but it doesn't have to be hard either. Once you start learning how to invest money, you'll get the hang of it.

Does GM need saving?

By Dino P Delellis

Amongst GM employees, aside from the fear of getting a pink paper next week ( or the week after ) speculation is high as to whether the concept vehicle, being called the Volt, is going to be as revolutionary as the hype suggests.

GM, Ford and Chrysler arrayed a huge number of lawyers and much cherished Washington lobbyists to go after California after it decided to introduce a zero emissions rule on part of all car fleets. While GM was fighting California, it was also building an electric car, 10 years ago called the EV1. The state lost, GM breathed a sigh of relief and promptly destroyed all EV1's and sold the patents.

Yep, sold the patents to a MIT. Just kidding. If the patents had been sold to MIT, the car would have been rebuilt and the Toyota Prius hybrid would never have been created. Whoever bought the patents wasn't interested in building an electric car. There is enough anecdotal evidence to suggest the battery patents were purchased by Texaco who has done tremendous work with them since ( NOT ).

Balancing the books, one might claim. Lots of Research and Development costs, nothing to show for it, so sell the technology. It wasn't an objective decision. After an acrimonious battle with the state of California, GM management couldn't get rid of the technology fast enough. A billion dollars later, GM executives didn't stop to think that perhaps core elements could play a critical roll in future transportation technology. They had to wait for the Japanese to prove that similar technology could and would be a huge element in the future of transportation.

So much for the history lesson, this week, we are back at square one watching a video interview with GM's Chief Designer as he discusses the new GM Chevy Volt.

The Volt is probably GM's last, best hope for the future and certainly its most significant upcoming vehicle. Saddled with dwindling market share, credit-strapped consumers, and a lingering reputation as a purveyor of gas-thirsty vehicles, GM executives need the Volt to become an iconic product, like Apple's (AAPL) 1998 iMac or even Chrysler's 1980s K-car before. The Volt has to affirm the company's ability to innovate and, eventually, create a financial foothold from which the battered automaker can begin to turn itself around.

GM's response to public outcry shortly after co-jointly winning the lawsuit against California on the grounds that only the federal government had the right to determine zero emission, was to go on a publicity campaign extolling the virtues of their own version of Zero emissions - Hydrogen gas by 2010. Which probably prompted BMW to wake up and create a wonderful Hydrogen Gas vehicle which is already 4-5 years old and in its fourth or fifth refinement. So zip forward to 2008 and GM has backtracked on its Hydrogen promises and is now attempting to leap frog the Toyota Prius with technology that will get a commuter 40 miles of gas free driving on a nightly electrical charge.

Because most daily commuters in the U.S. don't travel that far, GM says many drivers will not have to use any fuel at all, simply recharging the vehicle via a regular outlet at home overnight. GM is still wrangling with the Environmental Protection Agency over the vehicle's efficiency, but executives say the final number should be north of 100 mpg for both types of power.

Despite the GM bashing that many of us might engage in, on occasion, we all truly want a Volt or something like it. Traveling and seeing new places isn't just a wish for the elite. But with gas prices threatening to go higher and the slightest threat of war poised to carry them beyond even the previous high of $147 per barrel, having a vehicle with the potential of the Volt is simply everyone's dream.

So will or can the dream car Volt save the General?

I suppose it might be presumptuous but perhaps we should first ask - Does the General really need saving?

In May 2005, Business week estimated GM's Cash Reserves to be 45 Billion. However, for the first 6 months of 2008 the BostonHerald estimates that both Ford and GM burned through an average of a Billion dollars a month each, with accelerating burn rates towards the end of the year as sales in highly profitable vehicles like SUVs were down an improbable 18%.

According to an article in Detroit News Oct 14th 2008

GM had access to about $21 billion cash, $5 billion in available credit lines and is raising $5 billion through asset sales and borrowing.

Those cost-cutting moves intensified Monday when GM announced it was closing plants in Grand Rapids and Janesville, Wis. The moves affect about 2,500 hourly workers at plants that produce sport-utility vehicles and parts for pickups and SUVs.

Since 2005, the General's cash reserves have been reduced from 45 Billion to a mere 25 Billion and with the tightening credit crunch and federal government moving slowly on aiding the BIG3, the rumour doing the rounds is that GM is eyeing the cash reserves of Chrysler ( estimated 11 Billion ) to help it through 2009 when the arrival of the Chevy Volt and Cruz, the following quarter are expected to help turn things around.

In an interview given to Business week in the last week of Oct 2008, GM says its expecting to sell about 10,000 Chevy Volts at between 30-40,000 USD each in 2010. So, that's about 3-4 Billion dollars in gross sales with a net of about a 800 Million dollars annually at an estimated 20% profit per vehicle ( my own estimate not theirs )

So, is this innovative car of the 2010 year - Volt just a little, just too late?

I leave that answer up to you, but if I had to make a serious bet with odds, I know which way I would be betting. - 23162

About the Author:

Dino Delellis writes on a number of interesting topics. To see more of the Dino personal journals hop on over to Dino P. Delellis and catch his strange views on the globe at large.

Free Signals for the forex market

By Volodq Christoff

There are very few forex trading signals providers that are genuinely consistently profitable month after month. There are many that claim to be and have impressive looking performance records but very often it transpires that they massage their numbers, and use hypothetical figures in their calculations, rather than trade their signals themselves.

I've come across many different forex signals providers in my time. It's hard not to as the internet's full of them. Nearly all of them have turned out to be a waste of time. I thought I'd found a great site a while back in the shape of Forex Live Pro, but after having several highly profitable months, even they ended up going on a losing streak and have since closed down.

That's why there's only one company that I'm more than happy to recommend and that's ForexManuals.com

It's basically a managed forex trading account where you're in complete control over which signal providers you use, and all trading is completely automated.

I'm not sure how common the Smoothed Repulse indicator actually is but it's one that I've recently discovered hidden away in ProRealTime, the excellent charting software, and I have to say I'm quite impressed by it so far. - 23162

About the Author:

It is always handy to have good free signals forex. I use them all the time and it makes a big difference in the outcome of my free forex trading signals trades

Forex Made Easy Tips

By Chan Boldene

Contrary to popular belief, Forex Made Easy is often easy. Before I dive into deconstructing this whole Forex business (and it is a business), I'll share some simple but crucial Forex Made Easy tidbits. I will be going back to this periodically. They're important not just because you are learning to trade in the 4x markets, but because they are good principles to live by.

If you've been around at all, you've heard or read how the boat load of money you can make from FX Trading (or Forex Trading), so what are the rules and strategies and tips you can use to make money from 4X Trading? Below are the seven tidbits of wisdom for trading Forex that the team of Forex Made Easy concocted to help make you lots of USD, Euro, and Swiss Francs in this crazy and rewarding field.

Tip #1: Don't get greedy.

This is embarrassingly simple. When you're on a sizzling hot winning streak, it's easy to think that you can't lose, but it is the kind of thinking that is very dangerous. Trading is relatively easy, but you can lose your shirt, your pants, and your precious bank account in short order too. Greed can consume you and deplete your trading account faster than you can say "but they didn't teach me that in the Forex Made Easy blog!" Greed can devastate.

Forex Made Easy Tip #2:Get Educated

You don't have to be a market genius to make money in Forex. The Forex Made Easy blog is here to help you with that. Anyone can learn how to trade and anyone can make money. You don't need to spend long getting educated either, but having experience trading will be invaluable to you. Make sure you have a trading rules and a trading plan.

Tip #3: The Best Proven Systems are Simple

This Forex Made Easy tip is perhaps the most difficult to conquer because we like gadgets and systems and indicators and tools. Use the KISS method: Keep it Simple Stupid. The phrase is completely overused but it fits. Keep it simple, use a few indicators, and support and resistance. Don't get complicated. Simple trading "systems" are far more robust than complicated ones.

Tidbit #4: Make Sure You Have Risk and Money Management Rules.

This Forex Made Easy piece of advice is incredibly boring. Success in the FX market is built on risk management and money. Ten percent should be the maximum amount you risk on any one trade. Five percent or less is much better.

Tidbit #5: Discipline - Set Up a Basic Set of Rules and Stick to It.

No matter how good of a trader you think you are (and you're probably not all that...sorry), you will pile up losses. Even after you search this Forex Made Easy site for nuggets of insight and wisdom, you will still need disciple. So, let me repeat that, you will have losses; you will lose occasionally. But you need to have discipline to ride out the losses and come back. Know YOUR rules. Stick to them. Keep your emotions in check when trading. Leave nothing up to your emotions. Write your instructions down and follow them. I can't emphasize this point enough, because if you don't follow what you created when there was no pressure at all, then you probably will lose money.

Tidbit #6: Have A Blast.

Trading the Forex markets can be rewarding and challenging. It can also be exciting. Don't take your gains OR your losses so seriously. Don't monitor the markets all day. Get outside. Relax. Spend time with your family. Watch a sunset. Play with your kids. The markets will always be there tomorrow.

Tip #7: Paper Trade Until You "Make Money"

Practice Practice Practice. You won't hear that enough. There are software applications on the market (and some that we can recommend) to help you so that you won't lose money quickly. You can test strategies, theories, and win a million dollars - all with no money changing hands! You need to "paper trade." It's actually a no-brainer but something you will overlook if you think you are smarter than the markets. If you cannot make money when there's it's just on your computer screen, what makes you think you can make money when you're risking your hard-earned money?

We at believe that anyone can make money trading the Forex markets. The effort you need to put in will be well rewarded. So don't forget this rule: simplicity is best. Simple, steady, and well-executed strategies will make you a lot of money from trading the currency markets. That's the Forex Made Easy way. - 23162

About the Author:

Mr. Mr. Boldene is a technical writer and has penned many articles on the currency markets. Join him at currency Tips for a few key pointers. Visit also currency Rumors.