Investing

1. What exactly is the Simply Investing course?

The Simply Investing course is an online video course created by me, to teach you how to invest successfully. I teach the principles of value investing with a focus on dividends. The same techniques used by successful investors like Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, David Dodd, and John Templeton. In the course I teach you in plain English:

• the basics (what is a stock, stock market, and dividends)
• how to find great stocks, and avoid the bad one…

Are Your Investments Making You Money?

Are You Happy With The Results?

Will You Have Enough to Retire?

Can You Quit Working?

If you answered “No” to any of the above questions, then the time to act is now. I know life is busy and it’s easy to put off investing for a few years, but before you know it’ll be too late. That is right; there comes a point in time where it’s too late to begin investing!

Waiting 5, 10, 15 years or till you retire to start investing will be too late to earn sufficie…

When is the best time to buy stocks? Should you try and time the market? No, market timing doesn’t work. It is always a good time to buy quality dividend paying stocks when they are undervalued. No one can predict the future. Analysts, financial experts are no good at predicting the future than you and I.

Therefore it is impossible for you to time the stock market, and try to buy stocks at specific times. Attempting to time stock purchases would be a full-time activity and you would be staring …

When you buy shares in a company, you are generally buying shares from a shareholder who is willing to sell those shares. For example if you buy $1000 worth of shares of Walmart, that $1000 goes to the seller of those shares not to Walmart. Why then should a company care about its stock price? A company only gets money from the initial public offering (when it’s shares first go on sale), subsequent buying and selling of shares occurs between investors.  Why then do companies put such a strong em…

Are you an investor or speculator? Or are you a speculator thinking that you are investing?

Over the years I’ve heard people say things like, “I’m going to play the stock market. I’ll gamble a few hundred dollars on this stock. If I get lucky I can retire soon.” When talking about stocks, I never mention the words “play” “gamble” or “lucky”.

Those words belong in a casino not when you are investing your hard-earned money. There is a big difference in investing versus speculating, Benjamin Grah…

On Friday (May 18, 2012) Facebook became a public company. Facebook shares began trading on the stock market, meaning anyone could now own a part of the company. But should you have bought shares in Faceboook?

The answer is no. Facebook shares started trading at $38 each, which valued the company at $104 billion. At $104 billion Facebook became the most valued company ever to go public. Here are some other companies and what they are worth today:

• Amazon is worth 97.01 Billion
• McDonald’s, 92…

There is a common misconception that people have regarding investing, especially investing in stocks and that is, “investing is difficult”. Most people believe that investing by themselves is too complicated therefore most folks leave it to the so called professionals. I like to call these professionals, mutual fund sales people, sales people who work on commissions. A sales person’s interests may not be in-line with your interests.

Keep in mind that mutual fund companies make money even when y…

Dividends are cash payments made to shareholders.  As a shareholder you are part owner of the company and therefore are entitled to share in the profits. Dividends can also help you determine when a share is undervalued, and priced right for purchase. There are a number of other additional benefits to owning dividend paying shares, and I discuss my top five in this article.

1. Dividends provide an immediate return

2. Your safety buffer against the worst case scenario

3. Dividends increase ove…

Companies will sometimes buy back their own shares, but is this good or bad for you the shareholder? Generally it’s a good thing because in the long run it will result in an increase in the share price. Here are the four key reasons for a stock buyback:

• the company believes their shares are undervalued and the market offers a good buying opportunity
• good use of excess cash when the stock represents the best investment (stock is undervalued) for a company, over and above using cash for reinve…

Here are 2 reasons why you need to start investing on your own today:

1. Each day you spend invested in mutual funds (take a look at your company RRSP or 401K statement) you are wasting money. Over time this could add up to over $300,000 lost to fees. Click here, and here to read more about this.

2. Start investing early to make the most money, each day you wait is lost opportunity. Do you really want to have to work another 15 years because you waited 2 years to start investing? Click here to…