stock market have been corrected more than expceted
world wide now you can invest in blue chipes

You are right Vineetanit. The markets have just started a new uptrend from a reasonably deep dip. How far up they will go, it's only the same market will tell us.

And yes, you can invest in blue chipes.

I have been investing in the stock market for 19 years but have been limited to my country, Nigeria. Anybody out there knows how I can go international?

There should be nothing to prevent you from trading anywhere. Get yourself a broker and he will advice you accordingly.

Thnks ngureco

Most ordinary people are better of investing in no-load, low cost, tax effective index mutual funds like those offered by Vanguard. Unless you have a lot of money to invest investing in individual stocks cannot provide sufficient diversification to reduce your risk of losing your savings. When you buy an individual stock you face two types of risk:
1) Individual company risk, i.e. risk that the company's business will not do well and 2) Market risk, i'e., that the entire market will decline due to economic problems or market bubbles. With broad index mutual funds individual company risk is eliminated, leaving only broad market risk which you don't have to be greatly concerned about if you are making long-term (10 years or more) investments.

I would not look for any countertrends in the market right now.  The market may go down quite a bit further.  Now I am not saying that it is not starting to recover but we must not get ourselves in the trap saying that it has gone down therefore it must go up.  This is actually a form of what is called counter trend fundamentalism.  This is nothing more than betting against the current trend.  This is a form of swing trading and to swing you have to be both long and short the market.  If you aren't then counter trend swing trading becomes a losing proposition.

I am not trying to give predictions but I am telling you that you should use another fundamental than the market is down so it must go up.  The best thing as always is to find individual stocks that you believe are doing well.   This is the best way to approach the market and make sane investments.

I wish you success.

Best regards,

Ben Evans

Ralph Deeds wrote:

Most ordinary people are better of investing in no-load, low cost, tax effective index mutual funds like those offered by Vanguard. Unless you have a lot of money to invest investing in individual stocks cannot provide sufficient diversification to reduce your risk of losing your savings. When you buy an individual stock you face two types of risk:
1) Individual company risk, i.e. risk that the company's business will not do well and 2) Market risk, i'e., that the entire market will decline due to economic problems or market bubbles. With broad index mutual funds individual company risk is eliminated, leaving only broad market risk which you don't have to be greatly concerned about if you are making long-term (10 years or more) investments.

Thanks for this Ralph. I'm always amazed at all the online stock trading commercials on TV showing 20-somethings buying and selling individual stocks on their PDAs. Who has that kind of money in their 20s? Clearly I've done something wrong (okay, I've done a lot of things wrong, but I mean in regard to money).

Investing a lot of money is bad right now, the stocks drop everyday. At the rate its going people (i heard from word of mouth) said there will be a depression early next year. I can believe it to, with the gas holding sales by the neck, the goods rising because of it, the price of imports skyrocketing, and even things like plane tickets up in price leaves no one with extra money for luxuries like that. The first depression we got out of by having a war, now this one we got into for having a war (if it happens), ironic isn't it?

thranax wrote:

Investing a lot of money is bad right now, the stocks drop everyday. At the rate its going people (i heard from word of mouth) said there will be a depression early next year. I can believe it to, with the gas holding sales by the neck, the goods rising because of it, the price of imports skyrocketing, and even things like plane tickets up in price leaves no one with extra money for luxuries like that. The first depression we got out of by having a war, now this one we got into for having a war (if it happens), ironic isn't it?

It really IS ironic. From day to day the market swings wildly on the latest news about this or that. I don't see any quick fix for it, and I don't see it getting better any time soon. There may be a rally for a few days, but then something else goes wrong and down it goes again.

I predict the next crisis will be mid-size bank failures. I give it another couple of months, tops.