How (NOT) to Buy Mutual Funds This is no different than letting a newly graduated medical student with a fresh MD behind his name perform heart surgery. Or, hiring a new MBA grad to Chief Financial Officer of a Fortune 500 company. Yet the financial services industry allows someone to get a license (after a fairly short course) and to immediately start making incredibly important and far reaching financial decisions for anyone he or she can sell their service to. [More] Investing and Financial Planning Because our goals and desires change as we do, financial planning and investing is a task that is never finished. How we are financially able to reach these goals, and the risk we are willing to take to get there, necessarily means that any financial plan must be specifically tailored for an individual or family. Financial planning begins by taking into account each individual's assets and liabilities at that particular point in time. [More] Stop Loss Order Methods Briefly you watch a stock, fund, ETF run up and then you see it stop and set back like a stair step. It will rest for a while with a short up and down sideways pattern that forms before the next move higher. Your stop should now be down at the point the recent up move started. When it advances again this current formation becomes the stop loss point. This is not mechanical and requires a more experienced trader to determine these points. Once you learn this technique you will also begin to see the orderliness of the market. [More] Saving Money On Baby: Tips From A First Time Momma The options to spend, spend, spend on baby begin way before baby is even here. I’m not going to tell you to use cloth diapers or to make your own baby food, but I will offer a few simple tips that will help you make smarter decisions and put some extra cash into that [...]. Market Close ^DJI, 11,689.24, +0.17% | ^IXIC, 2263.39, +0.09% | ^GSPC, 1336.59, +0.02% ^NDX, 1655.67, -0.21% | ^OEX, 620.35, +0.09% | ^SML, 376.16, +0.30% ^VXO, 11.04, +7.29% | ^VIX, 11.58, +0.43% | ^VXN, 17.41, -1.42%. John McCabe's Web Guides: Investing the Right Way The world of investments offers a dangerous draw: huge rewards with the chance of terrible losses. Investors love the idea of accumulating wealth, but no one likes losing money. The trick is to know how to invest with minimal risk. Nobody can predict the fluctuations of the market completely accurately, but as y.