How To Research Stocks

How I Analyze My Stock Picks

  When I go looking for companies in which to purchase shares in I start out by compiling a list of stocks which I am interested in and try to balance them within my portfolio's sector weighting.  Once I have selected a Watchlist of company's I look at a few key pieces of financial information. All of which are readily available either on the company's website, or Google Finance, your brokerages research tools and/or additional sources of financial information. 

Talking to Your Financial Adviser about ETFs? Some Questions to Consider

    Recently a family member came to me asking for some advice about the recommendations made by their financial adviser, and he wanted to know for the next time to talks to the adviser. The adviser was recommending some specific Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) to allocate some money into.

    The main questions that I was asked were:
1) Whether or not ETFs are a good idea.
2) Whether the fees for the ETFs and the advisers on top of that were worth it.
3) Should he just invest in them directly and skip the advisers commission on top of it.
4) What are some good questions to ask the adviser.

I won't go into what the specific ETFs were, as that is more of an asset allocation decision based on the person portfolio.