Some Investment Strategies to Consider

Since the market has gone down quite a bit in the past two years, it pretty much got purged of companies that were not fundamentally sound. Not to say that the companies that stayed on are great, but I'm sure one can find some good deals. I'm not saying buy every single cheap stock out there. Cheap might be crap. What I'm saying is that you still need to commit time to researching companies that you're planning to invest in instead of just going with the flow.

ALWAYS REMEMBER too that whatever money you put in the stock market, consider it lost so you don't feel bad if your account does tank. But it will make you feel good if your investments do well.

One way to play the market is by trading options. To learn how to trade options, check out the learning center of the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (www.cboe.com). The way options are priced is different from stocks. But most definitely cheaper. Options do expire though so you really have to learn your stuff before you even dive in. The good thing about options is that you can buy the rights to buy or sell a stock by paying a premium that could be significantly less than the price of the stock itself. Therefore, instead of paying full price for the stock and risking losing all that money anyway, it might be good to consider buying options. There are quite a few online brokerages that offer options trading. The ones with the lowest fees that I've seen are Scottrade, thinkorswim.com and OptionsXpress.

I have an account with OptionsXpress. I think I would transfer it somewhere else though when I find the time to go through the process so the commissions are cheaper (I'm leaning more towards thinkorswim.com). I currently own 300 options to buy Citi for $7.50 expiring in January 2011 and I paid $0.34 a share for it (plus commission). The current option price is $0.70. So the option price itself has doubled already and the stock hasn't even doubled in price yet. I also own 30 shares of IPATH S&P GSCI CRUDE OIL TOTAL RETURN, ticker symbol OIL that I bought for $20.69. The value now is $24.39. I'm making a little return on paper, or should I say, on my computer screen, until I sell them back to the market. It is a minor gain compared to the huge loss I incurred when the government took over Fannie Mae (about $4,000...yikes!).

Needless to say, there's huge risks in playing the market. You really have to know your stuff, or else be ready to lose a lot of money, and sleep to go with it.

Where Are You At With Your Finances This Year?

Are you going to pay more taxes this year? Were you able to start up that savings plan that you've been meaning to do? Did you overspend this year on your vacations? Did you not take a single vacation? Did you lower your debt?

Lots of questions...hopefully you've got some good answers.

There's roughly 3 months left this year. Maybe it's time to dig deep into your finances and see where you stand.