Banff Holiday Trip

Haven't posted for a little while now. For Easter, I went on a family vacation to Banff, Alberta Canada. I've been inspired by John Chow's blog, to also include some posts with pictures of highlights of my life. These are pictures of a stock enthusiasts life. So here they are, enjoy!



We stayed at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. It's an actual castle. Fairmont is a leader in luxury hotels.



Don't believe me that its a castle? Check out some of the people that greet you around corners.


Indoors was a nice flower display, I just have to show you guys!


This is my doggy Cody. He's not a puppy, but a 5 year old cross between a Bijon and a Pomeranian. Great little dog, loves to stay at castles.


One of my day's stay at Banff, I went to the Lake Louise Ski hill. Here is me leaving to go there.


In middle of April you can still go skiing over here. And the conditions were better than they had all season(probably because it was freezing cold rest of the season). This is not even close to end of ski season here, there was nice powder and non of that slush that you'd find in Vancouver B.C.


This is a picture I took and am very proud of. Your welcome to use it as your background display picture.


This is the wildlife you're likely to see all throughout Alberta. It's actually getting a little annoying because the wildlife is overpopulating and it's hard for people enjoy any of the city's parks.


Of course for Easter Sunday we didn't miss church. Here is me and my mother. The church was full to the brim because of vacationers there for Easter.


Here's a beautiful picture of the trans Canada highway. Those bridges are animal crossings. Again because of the wildlife overpopulation. Without them they'd just sit all over the highway and never let any vehicles pass by. ;-)

I hope you enjoyed! As for the stocks, I'll get right back on them soon this week!

How to Invest in the Stock Market

I have decided to make a blog post to help people on; how to invest in the stock market from all the experience I've gained. Posts dedicated to Josh for his birthday. Enjoy!

First of all, you must be interested in stocks and be able to devote a lot of time into research and learning. For me its really appealing, other than web publishing it can become a job which you can stay at home and sit in front of your computer all day while watching MSNBC. Another reason stocks are great to get into, is they're an awesome way to make money by investing. It's a fun game, and what's better than a feeling of winning? All those seasoned stock traders do leave an impression of successful rich people. Stocks got lots to do with mathematics, and physiologic calculus. What a great mix, my two favorite things come together!

People might tell you to play with "fake money" to see how well you do when you start investing in the stock market. Usually you won't keep interested in this since its not real money. If it was your real hard earned money you invested, each good stock investment will give you some nice cash to enjoy the stock market, while the losses will sting and make you get more motivated to research, study, and beat the market.

To be able to invest, you'll need a stock broker. The best way to invest is online and by yourself. Personally I use TD Waterhouse. Their trade fees are a little high ($29.00) but they haven't bothered me that much yet. Most brokers will charge about $15 a trade, and charge a monthly or annual fee. $10,000 is a good amount to start investing with. Anything under that, the fees can really pile up and you'll be investing just to break even and make your broker money. So make sure to know all the hidden fees and costs before picking your broker. Some brokers I would recommend are Fidelity, TD Waterhouse, Scott Trade, Sharebuilder, and E-trade. Once signed up, its very easy to make orders and manage your portfolio.

Your next move is to buy some shares of stock. What you'll need to do, is research stocks. To do this, all the info you'd ever need is out on the web. Sites to use are Yahoo Finance, MSN Money, and Google Finance. News, quotes, charts, everything there. The jist of it is, good news makes a stock go up, and if a stocks expecting goods news, it will keep going up until the news hits and vise versa for a stock going down. Research books and learn from experience why stocks go up and down.

As a new investor, there is a certainty that your going to loose money. Don't let this scare you away from the stock market, just learn from your mistakes and gain experience to make it successful in the long run. Experience is what lets you understand the stock market.

Once you get into investing in the stock market, there are lots of smart people out there saying this and that. Be open to listening what they have to say. You shouldn't trust everyone as some of them are just market movers trying to make money off inexperienced investors like you. Bashers will try to blow a stock down so they can buy low, while pumpers will try to raise a stock so they can sell high.

You need to find a stock strategy slash niche your good at, and exploit it for all its worth and more. Maybe your niche is penny stocks, channel trading, reading graphs, technology stocks or even day trading. You cannot copy the same stock strategy of another investor. One of which strategies has hurt me and other newbies was listening to Jim Cramer and relying on his stock picks. Once he mentioned a stock, it usually went up a couple percent and it was already too high to buy. The wise thing to do, is look into the stocks he recommends and monitor them until its the best time to buy.

As a new investor, I would suggest to stay away from penny stocks. These are very votile and a risky venture.

Being an investor you need to maximize your gains, and minimize your losses. Now that means two things. You can't be too greedy or you'll end up selling the stock after its reached its high. The second thing is you can't have fear, and sell a stock short after you've just bought it and it has fell a little. These two are big reasons why investors loose money in the stock market. Personally after I buy a stock, my strategy is to put in an order which will sell right after it hits a price target that will have gained me a certain amount of money (always include the price of trades in this) and keeps me from being too greedy.

The stock market might seem hard at first, but once you look back at how the market moved you'll say to yourself "how obvious was that". Never give up, and if you do just come back to this blog here and follow all my picks ;-) NO THAT'S COPYING STRATEGY!

Good luck to all investors! if there's anything you think I missed, leave a comment.