Cohenville

Kiplinger had a great article on investing tools, both online and on paper.   Many of the ideas I already know about or have done (some websites, investment thought (retirement!) and brokerage informatino.  But several other ideas and tips are below.

• Fix mistakes in your credit report.  First, get your free credit report once every 12 months from the three credit bureaus – Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.  Go to www.annualcreditreport.com.  Then file a dispute with the credit bureau.  They’ll have 30 days to respond, so wait and then follow up with details, the lender will have to update their records before the credit bureau can change your report.
• Keep a healthy investment balance by selling winners and rebalancing your portfolio distributions.  Know how much of your money should be in stocks by this rough guideline.  Subtract your age 110 and multiply by 1.25.  You can also consider a target date retirement fund that will automatically rebalance.

I came across this site with a lot of good information on investing in options.  There is a number of areas available with a subscription, but there is also a lot of good data, ideas and tutorials for free. One thing I really liked was the hotsheet and screeners, which provide good ideas for option investments or trades.  The free area offers older information on some – of course they want you to pay up for the up-to-date ideas.  Still worth looking at.

Source: Optionistics

Whether you want some secondary income or you want to diversify your portfolio of income streams further, take a read of Moolanomy’s post with over 40 different alternative income streams.   This is a follow up to his previous post entitled Building, Diversifying and Shifting Your Income Streams.

Source: Moolanomy

I recently read The Little Book that Beat the Market by Joel Greenblatt. I had heard a lot about the book and finally got around to getting through it. It had some good insight and discussed “the formula” – in fact, he has a web site called Magic Forumla Investing that will give you a listing of companies that meet the criteria for free. You list the minimum market capitalization that you are interested in, and out come the companies. I did wonder how it would work if everyone used it, but as the book states, it is a long term strategy and most people can’t stick to it, since there can be extended periods of down time. Anyway, it’s worth a look.

Source: http://magicformulainvesting.com

TechCrunch posted an update on MarketWatch.com, which released a new community-based stock predictor, called MarketPerception. The predictor is a small widget included on every stock listing page (example). Users are asked whether the stock will move up or down on the next trading day from its current price. Once a selection is made, the overall user votes are shown.

Source: TechCrunch

I registered at Stockpickr.com a while back but never really began to look at it more in depth. From their site:

StockPickr is a free stock recommendation site that allows you to receive automated stock recommendations from thousands of portfolios, both professional and amateur, with a similar make-up to yours. Just enter your favorite stocks and within seconds you will receive new recommendations based on matching your portfolio with the thousands of hedge funds, mutual funds and other peer portfolios that have a similar composition. It also allows you to network, research and discover new great ideas in the financial market arena EVERY DAY!

Source: Stockpickr

I was doing a google search recently to find blogs about stock picks. I already read a lot of trading blogs, each person with their different approaches. I came across Stockblogs.com – a site that simply lists a bunch of other stock blogs, separating them by category. The categories include (but are not limited to): General market, options, fundamental analysis, and technical analysis. The also have a “blog of the week” blog you can subscribe to.

Source: Stockblogs.com

Good entry today at Free Money Finance posting an email from a reader about great credit card offers. The email is detailed and provides his top two credit card recommendation based on cash-back rewards. A worthwhile read if you are earning 1% cash-back or less.

Source: Free Money Finance

An interesting post at Dogberry Patch on using 0% credit card balance transfer offers to make easy money. The idea is based off a post at FatWallet.com. The gist of it is borrowing a certain amount of money on credit cards that offer sign up bonuses and 12 month (or more) interest free payback offers. Lets say you run up $100,000 worth of credit card loans. Well, if you just put that in a high interest savings account like ING or Citibank you can make ~$5000 in a year with no risk. Simply withdraw and repay the credit cards before the 12 months. And there are many ways to get additional rebates and loans too. Sounds like an interesting idea – the biggest worry being the impact on your credit score.

Source: Dogberry Patch

I have started loaning money at prosper.com recently, trying to increase my personal returns on relatively safe investments. I have stuck to A and AA credit ratings (prosper.com ratings), but it’s always good to know what rates individual loans with specific credit ratings and debt/income ratios have been executed at. Historical data will help you better predict what interest rate you need to bid in order to win the loan. Now rateladder.com has a Loan Rate Analyzer to help you do just that.

Source: Lazy Man and Money