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Investing in Marijuana Stocks

One of my friends recently asked me what I thought of marijuana stocks and if they would be a good investment. It was a good question since marijuana is now legal in some American states and the market will probably be expanding quite rapidly, especially if other states follow suit and legalize it. There’s definitely money to be made, but my answer was, “No, not now” and here are my reasons: 1. There likely isn’t…

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Timing the Market vs. Buying a Quality Company at any time

These past few months, I’ve been saving my money and just using the dividends I’m receiving to pay off my margin loan because I think the market is quite high now and due for a correction. I also haven’t added any new positions or purchased any shares of the stocks I already hold for the same reason. Except now, I’ve basically paid off my margin loan, my emergency fund is fully funded and I’m just…

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Ethical Investing

When I talk to friends and acquaintances about investing and personal finance related things, one of the questions that I’m often asked is about what kinds of companies I hold stock in. I list things like Mcondalds, Chevron, Pfizer and Wal-mart and one of the comments is inevitably, “Those companies are evil and harmful to the world!” My short answer is that nothing is black and white and that the world I live in is…

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Real Estate or Stock Market Investing?

I was just listening to the Suze Orman Show on Podcast and she was talking about how she prefers stocks to real estate when it comes to investing. I most definitely agree with her, and my reasoning is exactly the same as hers. By real estate investing, I’m not referring to the house that you live in, but additional ones that you buy and rent out to others. When you have real estate, it comes…

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The Rule of 72

A simple way to estimate the time it will take for a sum of money to double is to use the rule of 72. Basically, you divide 72 by the interest rate, per year and the result is the number of years it will take for your money to double. For example: $10 000 invested at a 3% interest rate will take 24 years to become $20 000. Invested at 8%, it will take 9…

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High-yield = High-quality?

A mistake that beginning investors often make is going to a stock screener like Finviz and then simply searching for the stocks with the highest dividend yields, which in some cases are 10 or even 20%. If you buy shares of a certain stock worth $2000, it seems pretty fabulous to get dividends worth $200 (10% yield) or $400 (20% yield) every year. It seems like you’re make our original money back in 5 or…

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How often I look at my portfolio

I’m a long-term investor, which means that I’m more worried about what my dividend stock portfolio is going to look like in 10 or 20 or 30 years from now than I am about it in this current year. I know that there are lots of people who look at the market news and their brokerage account every single day and are paying attention to even little fluctuations in value. I would consider many of…

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Stocks are at record highs: what I’m doing about it

The stock market indices such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 are at some record breaking highs. At times like this, people often get into a frenzied like state and throw money around trying to get in on the action. What am I doing about it? Basically nothing. Although I do have a good amount of cash sitting in my bank account here in Korea earning 2% interest or so, it…

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Living in Saudi Arabia: what’s your number?

My old English teaching friend and I have been talking about various options for where to move after Korea. I really could move to literally almost any country in the world because everyone seems to want a reasonably well-qualified and experienced English teacher. Except the only problem is that the places that are the most fabulous to live (ie: Thailand, Costa Rica, Eastern Europe) pay the least and are pretty weak on the benefits. While…

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Buying Stocks: How Limit Orders work

When you’re buying stocks, there are a lot of different kinds of orders you can use. I generally understand the basics of most of them, but in actuality, I only use 1 type, a limit order. For the dividend stock investor who is investing for the long-term, it’s all you really need. Check out Investopedia for all the different stock market order types. Here’s how a limit order works: 1. Buying stocks. If stock ABC…

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Spend Less Than you Earn

Anyone can do it! No matter your income level, spending less than you earn is by far the most important thing. We’ve all heard those stories about people earning millions of dollars a year going bankrupt. Conversely, we all know about the guy next door working at some average job who ended up dying with millions in the bank. The difference is that one guy spent more than he earned while the other one didn’t.…

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