A reader asks, “…I’m an architect suffering under this dreadful economy like so many of us are, and I need to do something to help carry me through… What I’d like to do is use a portion of my IRA funds to educate myself further in the investment arena, pay back the loan, and use the remainder of the IRA to actively invest for income and growth. In other words, keep a portion of the earnings to supplement my income and reinvest the rest for growth. Does that sound like a reasonable idea?” My short answer is…
Three Criteria For Picking Winning Stocks
In our weekly “Ask Todd” series, a reader asked: “Todd, can you give me three quick criteria to sort individual stocks worth investigating from those that have no investment merit?” The quick and dirty answer is “your question has an underlying false premise.” Individual security selection is only the last 10-20% of return on any properly diversified portfolio and takes 80% of your analyisis time to figure out. Pareto’s Law dictates you can get 80% of the investment return for 20% of the effort if you just follow these simple criteria…
