Investing: Advice For You Speculators

Ok, we said we weren’t giving investment advice here, and according to the title of this post, we just lied.  We are certainly not going to advise individual investment strategies or stock picks, but we know some of you are going to dip your toes into the markets as a potential source of income after pharma.

The only advice we ARE going to give if you are considering making investment decisions on your own, or even exploring Day Trading as an income strategy, at LEAST point yourself in the direction of some recent trends, tools and resources that will give you some education and a fighting chance.

Overall Investing Trends

Credibility and Transparency

After so many so called “gurus” have led us so far astray this past year with their recommendations and advice, a big trend in the investing community is to have better transparency of the people who are actually making the recommendations.  This has spawned a whole new wave of investment advisors actually putting their credentials and portfolios online, so you can track their performance.  This trend is still in its infancy, but it has the potential to be much better for us in the long term.

So turn off sites like CNBC and shows like Cramer’s Mad Money, and check out sites like Covestor, and catch a glimpse of this emerging trend.

Sharing Information in Real Time

Another trend that is emerging as a result of this economic meltdown is a trend toward real time information being shared freely and in real time.  In other words, right this second, actual professional money managers, day traders, hedge fund managers, and institutional investors are sharing what they are trading – in real time using a really simple extention of Twitter.

It’s called StockTwits, and if you want to see what the pros are really doing when it comes to investing their own money, have a look here.  You can quickly see who is trading what, follow their lead, or just sit back and learn – but unlike Cramer and the CNBC crew, these guys are putting their reputations, and their ideas out there for all to see in real time.  The good ones quickly separate themselves from the pack, and their performance is all documented for the world to see.

Summary:

We can’t stress this enough – we are not recommending you pursue day trading or individual investing on your own.  But if you’re going to even explore it, check out Covestor and StockTwits, and get familiar with the emerging trends toward transparency, and real time information sharing.

And good luck!  (You may need it…?)