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Plain Language Place .com - "The Place to Learn About the Stock Market - in Plain Language" |
Building a Practice Portfolio using My YahooUsing a practice portfolio lets you see the results of your stock picks immediately. Since no money is involved, it is sometimes called “paper trading”. You can experiment trading in the stock market with an unlimited amount of money and your trades are commission free. Paper trading can really develop confidence and show you the pitfalls of a faulty strategy. Since the portfolio tracking software from Yahoo! is free, and you are not actually "buying" the stocks yet, lets get started.The first thing to do is set up a My Yahoo account available FREE at www.yahoo.com. Besides being your main stock evaluating tool and portfolio tracker, it is a customized on-line newspaper with sports, local weather, TV listings, horoscopes, calculator, appointment calendar, email - you name it. Spend a little time browsing and adding content to the right side of your My Yahoo page. Then every time you log in, you will receive the latest news stories direct off the wires about the subjects you picked. When you click the Refresh button on your browser, the latest stories are updated. News is updated every minute. Answer all of the questions Yahoo asks when you establish your My Yahoo account. At the end of the process, the generic My Yahoo page will be displayed. Go ahead and Add Content to your hearts content and build an interesting personalized electronic newspaper. But, setting up a practice stock portfolio is what we will concentrate on here. If you haven't already, click on the Add Content button once again and chose Business & Finance. Add Stock Portfolios which is usually the first choice at the top of the list, because the list is sorted by popularity. Tracking stocks is the most useful thing to do with Yahoo Finance. Click Finished and your My Yahoo page will reappear. If you don’t see a section entitled Stock Portfolios, hit the Refresh button and it will show up. The generic portfolio that is displayed will have DJIA, NYSE, S&P 500 and YHOO as the items tracked in a portfolio named Quotes. Click the Edit button next to Stock Portfolios (not next to Quotes), and you will be greeted by a page that says Create New Portfolio. Click on it, and let’s build our first one. Chose Track a symbol watch list from the page that is displayed next. When the Create Your Portfolio page comes up, give your portfolio a name. Since crude oil is huge news lately in America, you may want to keep track of it now. The energy market has the potential to affect the entire stock market so it’s wise to keep an eye on it. You can name the portfolio Oil & Energy, or whatever you like. In the Symbols box, type ticker symbols, separated by spaces, of the oil stocks you want to track. Let me suggest a diverse group that covers most aspects of the energy market. First a couple of the big boys: Finally you might add some less expensive domestic U.S. oil and gas suppliers, which are selling for $13 or less per share as of Jan. 2006. Remember small stocks rock! If a $50 per share stock goes up a buck, you have made a 2% gain. If a $5 stock goes up a buck you have a 20% profit. The law of small numbers WINS! Create other portfolios of industry sectors that you are interested in. Finance/Banking, Technology, Healthcare and Utilities are a good example of a diversified investment group. Also create a portfolio named Portfolio. This should be on top of the others and will be where you will track the stocks you buy and sell, or paper trade. Another good idea is to create a portfolio named Index. With this you can watch any major stock market index you choose at any time, even indices of foreign stock markets. Add stocks to your portfolios by clicking the Edit button next to its name. Follow the instructions given and separate your stock ticker symbols with spaces. How do you find a ticker symbol if you don’t know it? At the bottom of your stack of portfolios, there will be a box that says Get Quotes and a link underneath it called Symbol Lookup. Just enter the name of the company, as best you know it, and the ticker symbol will be displayed. A direct link to that page is: finance.yahoo.com/lookup. Clicking on a stock symbol in any one of your portfolios will bring up the Quotes & Info page for that particular company. This is the page where the research begins. This is covered further in my Article FREE Yahoo! Finance Pages Explained. Good luck with your paper trading!
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by PLP's
Ken Mueller
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| "WOW, Great ebook!" "I finally understand what valuable information is free in Yahoo and how I can use it to decide if I should buy or sell the stocks I'm interested in. Your book helped me a lot!" Salesman with $$$ - Sarkis K, Schaumburg IL |
| "Thanks, Ken" "Your personal review of my Retirement Plan really helped me sleep better. Now I know what I am invested in. Plus your plain language explanation helped me understand what I can do to change my options and protect my retirement plans." Gov't Employee - John G, Lombard, IL |
| "Good Advice, Ken!" "I really appreciated your explanation of penny stocks. Here I was ready to risk real money on them. Instead I watched their prices and saved myself a bundle!" Retired Educator - Violet T, Chicago, IL |
| "Nice Job" "Ken's been my "Goto Guy" for individual stock information for years. He speaks at my Investment Club and explained to everyone how he does it using the free information on the Internet." Certified Financial Planner - Thomas B, Elgin, IL |