The Stock Market Point of View

If you are thinking of investing in the Stock market then there are a few golden rules to bear in mind. The first is not to invest more money than you can afford to lose. The second is that you have to do a lot of research to work out likely trends in the market. These trends are notoriously difficult to read, especially in the current situation, when the Middle East is as volatile as it is has been in the recent past.

Prices of crude are escalating once again and this would have been very hard to predict three months ago. Stock market pundits would say that this adds to the drama of investing and of the volatile stock market, Mark Cuban so aptly said, “If you don’t follow the stock market, you are missing some amazing drama.” This is true, but sometimes as the drama unfolds it turns into personal financial tragedy.

You can get free stock market quotes online and current stock quotes from all the world’s stock markets online, whether you are thinking of playing the Korean, Canadian UK or US markets, you can get real-time quotes on stock prices with a few clicks of the mouse.

The NASDAQ heat maps for the NASDAQ-100 and the -100 Pre-Market and Exchange Traded Funds, allow you to see at a glance the stock activity, and with the color coding the heat maps use, you don’t have to analyze the movements yourself. However with such maps the stock market remains unpredictable as Jim Cramer famously pointed out, I quote, “Every once in a while, the market does something so incredibly stupid, it takes your breath away.” (Hopefully this won’t prove fatal!)

George Soros, who made his money from very shrewd investing in the financial market, had this rather enigmatic statement regarding the Stock exchange and its workings: “Stock market bubbles don’t grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality; but reality is distorted by a misconception.” Thank you George – think about it!

When people tell you not to put all your stock market eggs in one basket, but diversify, remember what Warren Buffet said; ” Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.”

The last word should go to Ivana Trump, Donald’s ex: “I made a tremendous amount of money in real estate. I’ll take real estate rather than go to Wall Street and get 2.8% Forget about it.”