In my defense, anyone interested **should** at the very least go to the webpage referenced…

As to how Mr. Lavaman buys… Good for you .. Buying at a discount can be harder to perform properly than buying good stocks or funds that are moving up. I also buy discounted by using the slow stochastic. Although it seems a simple approach … Buy when it pops over the 20 line, in fact there are several vagaries that you have to be aware of.. But again, like Mr. Lavaman, I buy discounted equities as swing trades.

Thx jegan

Umm, this makes no sense. Essentially you’re saying “Buy high, sell low”. I do the exact opposite. I buy more shares of my index fund when it dips down (i.e. goes on sale) and buy less when it goes up (i.e. when it gets expensive). In other words, “Buy lots low, buy fewer high”. After all, in your own words: “Why lose money?”

M. Lavamann

That wasn’t the impression I got from them. They do believe that index funds are appropriate for every investor, and that they are plan A. I think they do the stock research for individual stocks as helping inform an investor who wants to do more than 401K/IRA indexes. The Fool Idea I think is to inform individuals and have them choose how to build an actively managed portfolio, versus paying someone hefty fees to do it for you.

Stick to low cost index funds; and save yourself the anxiety of having to watch everything every day.

The Bogleheads forum is also a good start:

http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/index.php

The Motley fool is definitely a split personality — you can find great advise on saving money next to endless spam on smelly investment schemes.

Aside from his 50-50 strategy, the book also shows you how to very quickly decide if a stock is worthwhile. A 1 minute read at Yahoo Finance.

More importantly, as you go through the book, he explains what moves the market, what to ignore and that which is of value.

Lastly, this is no ‘black box’ program. It is intended to help investors become profitable. He does have a webpage and you can sign up for the weekly email lectures. He also is a regular guest on TDAmeritrades web-lessons. His approach is a no-brainer education on how to invest, whether you invest in stocks, ETFs or Mutual Funds. In fact, for all the ‘buy and hold’ fund owners; Even if you do not buy his book, **DO** go to his webpage and sign up for the emailed lessons. Check your fund’s weekly on Yahoo’s ‘interactive chart’ against the 50 EMA …. If it drops below the line, sell… If it pops up over the line again..Buy. Why lose money?

I have purchased and read about 2 dozen books in the last year and none of them provide the whole picture and a logical, easy to follow approach to investing theway this book does.

Webpage : http://www.traderdoc.com/page/page/5340636.htm

Thx jegan

While CAPS auto-updates stock picks and ranks by users, it does so on a past-looking basis. That’s an issue that any forecasting system has.

Stocks are something that should be purchased after index funds, IMHO. I think alot of questions about the Fool will be answered in a coming series where I sat down with David Gardner, co-founder of the Fool, for an hour at Starbucks.

My thought is that stocks are a good investment after one is already invested in pre and post-tax index funds, and has available cashflow and has sufficient diversification in other investment vehicles (a home, bonds, emergency fund, etc).

While I’ve subscribed to a few Fool items over the years, I’ve never used their stock picking services (other than the free CAPS). But I do own several companies (Costco, Berk-Hath B Class, Marvel, Under Armour, Google) that they had recommended in the past (I own them for my own reasons, obviously).

Investors who don’t have the time or inclination to get involved in stocks should steer clear and stick with index funds.

That being said, it is possible to beat the indices…Just look at the investing records of people like Warren Buffet, Peter Lynch and David Dreman. The key is to identify high-quality stocks that possess traits that are indicative of out-performance. James O’Shaunessy did a study of such traits over a 50-odd year period in his book ‘What Works on Wall Street’, which I consider to be required reading for anyone who is interested in stock picking. I plan to discuss this in a future article on my blog.

Even so, not every pick will be a winner. The key to success is to throw the odds in your favor and manage risk through diversification. Happiness is a high Sharpe ratio. :o)

The Fool tries to do this through their newsletters. I subscribed to their Hidden Gems offering for a while. And while the picks were generally good, I took issue with the sheer popularity of their newsletters, as selected stocks would commonly jump up in price as soon as they were announced in the newsletter. In effect, the Fool is a victim of their own success.

I was just talking with a friend last night, and I mentioned that I’ve learned that I’m more risk-averse than I once believed. Index funds are just fine for me right now.

I like a ton of Fool articles; they’re really handy for learning new concepts about investing. Like anyone else, I’d also be intrigued to find a resource with consistently good information about stock selections that “beat the market,” but as often as I read that even the professionals don’t beat the market, I can’t help but wonder if the additional stress and time are worthwhile. After all, beating the market really isn’t even a necessary benchmark; what’s important is meeting your own financial goals.

With that in mind, your own financial goals may require information for directing your own investing in individual stocks. I’ll be interested to see what else gets said about the Fool here. I sound like much more of a detractor than I really am, but I’ve just had these gnawing suspicions about whether the Fool really provides as much information as I’d like to believe.