Does anyone have any good stock and investing tips?

im doing a project/ game called the Stock Market Game for school, i hope it's not cheating, but does anyone have any tips or advice on what field is good to be investing in?

These games are very short term - so don't look to win by investing in big, well-known companies like microsoft, general electric, apple, ebay etc.

Find a stock between $5 and $10 that has quarterly results due in the next two weeks - since stocks tend to rise as investors anticipate the earnings announcement. Use the screener linked here to find which stocks are between $5 and $10.

Good luck.

Real estate mutual funds (called REITS) are a good safe bet, unless there's a major economic depression. In general during a bull market you should follow the crowd and in a bear market be a contrarian or value investor. Dow theorists are saying (as of Jan. 07) that we are currently at the start of a long term bull market.

http://www.premiuminvestor.com/

The number 1 tip I have for stock & investing tips is to go to this site to learn how to do it properly: http://www.fool.com/investing.htm
Try also http://caps.fool.com/TickerRankings.aspx?filter=1&sortcol=38&sortdir=1 to check out the latest top picks + http://quote.fool.com to try your hand at analysing stocks.

To help engage your brain to start thinking like an investor, it might help to read the biography of one of the greatest investors of all time: http://beginnersinvest.about.com/cs/warrenbuffett/a/aawarrenbio.htm
http://www.salon.com/people/bc/1999/08/31/buffett/

It doesn't matter, jus t pick a few ...even pick at random.

If the class runs through a semester any winners and losers are mainly luck due to the minuscule time span involved. Now, if this carries over a year...its the same. Just pick a few and do nothing. The results especially in the SR (short run) are volatile and any big wins or loses are almost purely luck.

What you should focus on is how to read the three financial reports put out by companies and their 10-k reports. Know the common ratios. Get practice in that...it will be many many years before any company lets you pick a stock.

If you are going for results in a short period of time.....try taking a shot on something involving China. Oversold market but should get some short term gains.

Maybe try www.stock-exc.com

Check your e-mail for spam messages which try to entice you to buy shares of specific companies. Usually, these are companies with fairly low price per share. Wait a few days after each one you see, and then short shares of the advertised companies. If you are really aggressive, short them right away, but there is a greater likelihood of fools to invest in such stocks right after such a marketing campaign than a few days later. Historically, this has proven to work pretty well by way of observation, but I only have an IRA account and I have no margin account to test this more thoroughly. I'm sure it would be a winning combination 9 times out of 10 though, at least.

Applause to you for trying to teach such a difficult yet critical subject for today's youth!

It's not really important which field is a good investment - IMO, it's more important that the kids learn about some of the different fields, and learn how to judge for themselves which fields may or may not be good investments. The Teacher doesn't have to come out ahead - even the best stock pickers in the world were never 100% right.

I used to be a part-time teacher, and I favor a more "facilitator-guide" approach when it comes to "teaching" a subject that I'm not as familiar with. Basically, students educating themselves because I wasn't qualified to educate them about that particular subject anyway. (But actually, even if the teacher is qualified, I still usually favor this approach.)

I would consider trying to let the kids identify, investigate, and explore those fields by themselves on the internet. (Depending on the age of your kids.)

A rough plan could be:

The Yahoo finance/investing site has a list of various broad industry indexes here:

http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/ind_index.html
(The only reason why I'm hesitant about using the Top Industry list is that it doesn't include Retail.)

In this hypothetical scenario, after doing a very student-centered introduction with little/no teacher input, you could ask the students to each pick a field that they might be interested in learning more about. IMO, personal choice/freedom/interest is necessary to motivate self-education. Divide them into small groups based on their choices (same picks, same groups), and have them do research on their industry. (Students educating themselves.) Ask them to prepare a basic overview of the industry, past historical performance, future outlook, etc. that they will share with the rest of the class in 1,2w, or 1 month's time. After presentation, students make picks about which industries/companies will likely go up. Give each 10K to allocate, and limit their choices only to the ones that the students have covered and presented. (Students educating other students).

Track performance once a week, and give students option to buy, sell, hold - just like real life. They'll start to see for themselves the erratic, unpredictable, and often unexplainable daily movements of stock prices. (You could do a whole other class on the psychology of buy/sell decisions in stock investing.)

In a later classes, you could explore famous stock pickers and their stock picking strategies - as well as bad ones. And/or you could investigate the most frequently used valuation metrics like P/E, ROI, book value, debt, etc. Then you can explore well-known individual companies, like Microsoft, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, or whatever big name brands they may know about. Students pick their own interests, divide into teams and research, present to class both the upsides and downsides, then students pick which ones might be attractive investments. Give each another 10K. Then you can compare both individual company performance and index performance. The wrapup class should include the caveat that most investment time frames are longer than 1 semester, so poor performance is not a true indicator of good stock picking.

Anyway, just some random brainstorming. Sorry I got carried away - I'm interested in both finance & education. This question gave me some good ideas which I'll probably use myself in the future.

They should really teach more finance in schools. It's one of the most important skills we need to survive in our society, and yet students are not even required to learn the basics.

Look up some of these: POPE.Z (it had a very nice run-up recently, maybe there's more, although Weyerhauser, WY, and Deltic Timber, DEL, are in decline); YTBL (its travel business is booming); HTZ (Hertz had a big run up recently also, been sort of sideways, but it might take another jump, maybe); USAP (really good earnings improvement) and SYNL. Just because they have been like a rocket doesn't mean they will continue, indeed, these might fall just about as fast--that is part of the risk. I picked them from a list of industries with large gains recently.

The link below is to something on BusinessWeek.com. Sometimes they throw out a list of interesting things, so give them a thought--this time it is the top 5 companies with oodles of extra cash laying around ready to be put to work: XOM, MSFT, CSCO, HPQ*, and AET. Recent prices include 75.08, 29.39, 27.40, 40.78, 46.13, respectively. Between these 5 companies, they are sitting on something close to $100 billion in cash. I think if you, say, had a practice $10k, divide it among them. Even if they didn't increase, I bet your teacher will be impressed with the choices and rationale. Good luck.

*I personally don't trust this one to rise although it has been good recently.

ADDED: One share of each of these would have been $218.78 at close Thursday. At 11 AM Friday, it is $218.74. Anyone else want to post numbers for their picks over the open period of this question? Even on a market downtick, I'd like to see something definitively better for our asking student than a thumbs down. Hmm? (and from the first set POPEZ is $44.49, down 1 cent; YTBL is $8.58, up 15 cents; HTZ is 21.50, down 20 cents; USAP is 51.31, down 15 cents; and SYNL is 27.40, up 40 cents; $153.28, up 19 cents from the close of yesterday)

ADDED at the close: XOM was $75.22; MSFT, 28.90; CSCO, 27.51; HPQ, 40.82; and AET, 46.06. That is $218.51. The poor girl would have lost a whole 27 cents if she bought one share of each for her practice over one day. Sorry. Check it again in a few weeks though, okay? Now, what concrete advice did the others here give for "any good stock and investing tips"?

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