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Every Wednesday, we publish our “Investor Toolkit” series on TSI Network. Whether you’re a new or experienced investor, these weekly updates are designed to give you specific stock market advice that will help you develop a successful approach to investing. Each Investor Toolkit update gives you a fundamental tip and shows you how you can put it into practice right away. Today’s tip: “Relying on just one or two indicators to help you choose stocks can increase your risk rather than diminish it.”...

Every Wednesday, we publish our “Investor Toolkit” series on TSI Network. Whether you’re a new or experienced investor, these weekly updates are designed to give you specific investment advice that will help you develop a successful approach to investing. Each Investor Toolkit update gives you a fundamental tip and shows you how you can put it into practice right away. Today’s tip: “Financial ratios will tell you a lot about a stock—but look closer and you may get an even clearer picture.”...

Dividends don’t always get the respect they deserve, especially from beginning investors. A dividend stock’s yearly 2% or 3% or 5% yield barely seems worth mentioning alongside yearly capital gains of 10%, 20% or 30% or more. Yet dividends are far more reliable than capital gains. A stock that pays a dividend of $1 this year will probably do the same next year. It may even rise to $1.05....

This is the latest in a series of video interviews in which Pat McKeough will give his advice on a variety of topics. Some will deal with his overall investment philosophy, others on specific investment strategies, and still others will be comments on events that are affecting the markets and the economy. This time, the subject is real estate investing, as Pat replies to questions that followed his earlier video on the home as an investment. (View the post here: Do You Think of Your House as an Investment?) Several readers insisted that they saw their houses as a good source of building net worth, whether through its intrinsic value or as a source of collateral for buying stocks. Pat has a few words of caution on both of those points.
Real Estate Investing: Your House as a Source of Building Wealth ...

3 tips for lowering risk when you’re investing in stocks have long been a part of the advice we give in our investment services and newsletters.

CurrencyShares Canadian Dollar Trust, $100.33, symbol FXC on New York (Shares outstanding: 5.8 million; Market cap: $581.9 million; www.currencyshares.com), is one of a number of CurrencyShares ETFs offered by Maryland-based Rydex. These ETFs rise in value when the U.S. dollar falls, and drop when the U.S. dollar rises. CurrencyShares Canadian Dollar Trust is designed to track the price of the Canadian dollar. The shares yield 0.10% after expenses. The fund’s MER is 0.40%. Buying one share of this fund is equal to owning 100 Canadian dollars. Here’s a list of the other eight CurrencyShares ETFs:...

From time to time, investors ask whether they should buy stocks “on margin.” That is, whether they should borrow money from their brokers to buy securities. This is a respectable investing strategy, but it carries more than the usual amount of risk. The main cost involved with buying on margin is the interest on the money you borrow. Plus, when you sell a security that you’ve bought on margin, you must first pay back the loan from your broker....

Today, we discuss three fairly common errors we remind our readers of from time to time. Almost all investors make one or more of these mistakes sooner or later.

You might call it fair-weather investing. Many investors prefer to buy stocks only when economic and financial conditions seem good, if not ideal. When there’s news of rising oil prices or interest rates, for instance, they are inclined to stay out of the market, or get out if they’re already in. Yet when they think conditions are ripe, these “fair-weather” investors can be surprisingly casual about what they buy. They readily accept recommendations from brokers, or they buy stocks that are touted by public-relations firms. They give promoters and insiders the benefit of the doubt....

Dividends rarely get the respect they deserve, especially from beginning investors. That’s because a dividend paying stock’s yearly 2% or 3% or 5% yield barely seems worth mentioning alongside yearly capital gains of 10%, 20% or 30% or more. But dividends are far more reliable than capital gains. A stock that pays a dividend of $1 this year will probably do the same next year. It may even raise it to $1.05....