By Charles Rotblut Apr 03, 2009 Family Dollar Stores, Inc. (FDO) could top expectations. Alcoa, Inc. (AA) could disappoint. First-quarter earnings season "officially" starts on Tuesday afternoon with Alcoa's (AA) report. Per share earnings for the S&P 500 (SPX) are projected to have fallen 13.9%. Median company earnings are likely to be worse, down 21%. (The difference is that median earnings are not weighted, whereas index earnings are.) More than 370 companies could report a year-over-year drop in profits. The big keys for first-quarter earnings season will be whether actual...

Buying multi-family homes or apartment buildings is one of the most profitable commercial real estate investments you can make. It doesn't matter whether you decide to live in one unit and rent out the rest of them, or if you rent out all the units and live elsewhere. Investing in multi-family apartments or homes can make the passive income you earn each month increase exponentially, in addition to your net worth. Here's why you should choose multi-family homes and apartment buildings if you want to improve your cash flow and succeed as a commercial real estate investor. Both of these ...

The five best performing stocks on the Zacks #1 Rank List last week were: American Science and Engineering, Inc. (ASEI), Allegiant Travel Company (ALGT), Alpharma Inc. (ALO), Hanger Orthopedic Group, Inc. (HGR) and Emergency Medical Services Corporation (EMS). American Science and Engineering, Inc. (ASEI) announced a solid fiscal second-quarter performance on Nov 10, which helped this supplier of X-ray inspection solutions become a top-performing Zacks #1 Rank company last week. Shares advanced a little more than 16% for the week ended Nov 14. Over the past 7 days, earnings estimates for ...

The five best performing stocks on the Zacks #1 Rank List last week were: RightNow Technologies, Inc. (RNOW), TransDigm Group Inc. (TDG), The Buckle, Inc. (BKE), Conn's, Inc. (CONN) and WGL Holdings, Inc. (WGL). RightNow Technologies, Inc. (RNOW) reported fourth-quarter earnings per share of 2 cents on Feb 4, which surged past the consensus by 150%. RNOW has a good record of beating Wall Street's quarterly earnings expectations. In the year-ago period, the company lost 10 cents per share. Total revenue advanced 18% year over year to $36.1 million from $30.7 million. The quarter's resu...

Make Money At Home Selling Call Options This article will explain the “nuts and bolts” of selling call options. This is a method that investors employ when they believe that the price of the underlying stock will decrease below their option strike price (prior to the expiration date). You can either utilize this method if you own the underlying stock (covered) or don’t own the underlying stock (uncovered or naked). The latter strategy of selling naked calls is similar to renting something you don’t own; the appeal of making immediate money without investing capital (although risky) is the...

Investing in the stock market is one of the most profitable and the riskiest kind of investments. Nowadays, in most cases, investment allocation is a result of flowing cash to the assets where the current return and risk are satisfied a certain investor expectation. There are some differences between such participants of the stock market as investors and traders. However, a classical investor and trader are both aim at gaining money. History evidences the different cases, when an investor started with a small amount of money and eventually became very rich, or on the contrary, when a millionai...

As the name suggests ELSS (equity linked savings scheme), invests primarily in equity shares of companies. As per financial regulations, the scheme Fund manager has to invest 80% of the total amount in the equity shares and the remaining 20% per cent can be invested in other instruments like bonds, debentures, government securities and others. When you invest in ELSS your money is locked for a period of three years (minimum). Once you invest in tax saver funds you cannot withdraw the amount for three years, this acts as a blessing in disguise as tax saving funds generally yield high returns du...

Many experts will tell you that buying a 1 gram gold bar is not the way to go if you are serious about investing. However, there is a growing number of experts who believe that buying small gold bars is a good way to get into the gold market without making huge, upfront investments. Small gold bars are what many people buy to give as gifts to friends and family members. These 1 gram gold bars are more popular than buying the same weight gold coins. One factor is the mark up, because the price difference between a 1 gram gold bar and a similarly weighted gold coin can be as much as $40 an oun...

Demo Accounts – Visit one or several of the links provided and sign up for a 30-day demo account. During this time use your paper trading account to get used to the charting and order execution. Also keep track of your trades using the journal we provided. General Rules 1.No more than 1 trade per week for each currency pair. 2.The trading week begins at 00:00 GMT (ignore any Sunday trading action) 3.Use a weekly chart for collecting the high, low and close and enter it into the spreadsheet to generate the next weeks long and short entries. 4.Targets Depending on your paper tradi...

Puts as we should know give the owner the right to sell a particular underlying (stock, ETF etc.) at a given price. Example, July 20 put give the holder (owner) of this option the right to sell this stock at 20 before the 3rd week of July. This also obligates the seller of this put to buy this from the put owner at the given price. In our example, the seller of this put is not obligated to buy the shares at 20 if assigned. There is always another side to a trade. Now to do all of this, there is a premium involved. Much like insurance (in fact this is what options are is passing on ri...