Gradually I have become less interested in individual stocks and more interested in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) which allow me to make a little money from China or India while losing money in Real Estate or the Middle East. Websites such as Google Finance, MarketWatch, and stockta.com allow you to track stocks through online portfolios. Another nice free service is investmenttools.com. For a quick glance at overall trends, I also like the market overview page at stockcharts.com or some of the "view all funds" lists available at ETF providers such as iShares or PowerShares. Of course, the Wall Street Journal offers an excellent market data page.
In the hard times that are coming, newspapers will likely continue their downsizing and dispersion. But I don't think this will affect investors very much. Outfits like Standard and Poors, Thomson-Reuters, Bloomberg, and Murdoch seem like they will be able to continue delivering robust information to premium customers. When you go looking for information that has cash value, you discover that the information sector is booking plenty of first class seats.
Plato's Republic teaches that justice is a matter of everyone minding their own business, because each occupation has its urgencies. So let's clear up first things first. Real Investing is a full-time occupation. If the market calls, you'd better be there to answer. Meanwhile, you'd better keep watching out. Once you get a taste for the daily risk of the market life you can see why so many people with Real Money still prefer to take out U.S. Treasury notes. When someone says China is buying U.S. bonds for chiefly political reasons please ask them where they'd find a less risky place for Real Big Money today.
Therefore, anyone who wants to make a national policy of retirement funding via personal market accounts is simply asking everyone to drop what they do best, because you cannot expect everyone to be an excellent investor on the side. Retirement funding is a craft unto itself. Besides, imagine your tax dollars going into someone else's market bets.
There are three basic families of market theory. The first one is represented by Jim Cramer, the bouncing host of Mad Money. I like the guy, because there is something pleasing about anyone enjoying his work that much. Plus, if you actually have "skin in the game," his daily presence on television is a kind of exorcism against the dread-mongering that fills so much market chatter. He didn't succumb to the great "head and shoulders scare" of early July.
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