Happily, my husband’s beloved Giants won the Super Bowl yesterday. Yay! But I also something else that made me smile. While most of the Super Bowl commercials were lame-ish, I did enjoy these E-Trade baby stock investing commercials. I do like online discount brokers. And these commercials made me like them even more…

There are investments to be made, even in a bear market. As we continue to look at the Paul Farrell MarketWatch article about beating the bear market, we find some good investment advice:
You don’t need a broker nor funds run by active managers with high expense ratios. Protect your nest egg by investing in low-cost, no-load index funds. Research proves low expenses are the only reliable predictor of future performance.
This is good investment advice even in a bull market. Administrative fees and loads can eat into your earnings on index funds. This also applies to other types of investments. If …read more

Earlier today in my quest to find ways of beating the bear market, we looked at going contrarian. This post is related to that concept, with Paul Farrell at MarketWatch recommending a do-it-yourself approach to investing:
Remember Buddha’s advice: “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” You are the only “expert” you can trust: All brokers and money managers, newspapers, magazines, online and newsletter pundits, all television anchors, and every other special-interest guru is “selling” you …read more