What are the best stocks to invest in?

Question

I am thinking about investing in stocks and am not sure which would be the best stocks to actually invest in.

Answer 1

Before I give information on individual stocks, you need to figure out whether you know enough about stocks and can do the homework on the stock picks. Even if people give you suggestions here, you still have to do your homework on each one. If you do not have the time nor inclination to study individual stocks, then maybe you should just invest in index mutual funds or Broad Based ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds, mostly indexed mutual funds that trade on most exchanges like a stock. You buy and sell these like stocks).

Here's more info and guided tour of whether you should try individual stocks or mutual funds or ETFs:
http://techfarm.blogspot.com/2007/07/how-do-i-start-investing.html

Now, if you do know how to do homework on individual stocks, and wish to create a diversified portfolio of 5-10 individual stocks in different sectors, here are a few suggestions for you to start DOING HOMEWORK on.

1. Basic Materials:
a. FCX (Freeport McMoran, Gold and Copper)
b. ATI (Allegheny Technology)

2. Consumer Discretionary:
a. GME (Gamestop) -- Major gaming cycle is here (3 major consoles), large Generation Y
b. NTRI (NutriSystem) -- obesity problem is a long term trend
c. SNDA (Shanda Interactive) -- Chinese Online Gaming Company. Chinese Middle class is growing, and I can see them getting addicted to online games.
d. JBX (Jack in the Box) -- Regional fastfood (growth to be national) with Mexican Qdoba grill exposure. you remember the Chipotle (CMG) spinoff by Mcdonalds?
e. CKR (CKE Restaurants) -- Carl's Jr. Fast food and other fastfood chains. Good small cap fast food long term growth at a reasonable price?

3. Consumer Staples:
a. UL (Unliver) -- Much cheaper and better growth
than PG (Procter and Gamble)
b. HANS (Hansen) -- Growth Drink Company
c. PEP (Pepsi) -- Large diversified drink company
d. CEDC (Central European Distribution) -- Central
European drink company)
e. WBD (Wimm Bill Dann) -- Fast growing Russian
Diary and milk company. Look at the chart! Wait for
pullback?

4. Energy:
a. Integrated Oil:
COP (Conoco Philips)
b. Drillers:
ESV (Ensco)
GSF (Global Santa Fe)
c. Refiners:
VLO (Valero)
TSO (Tesoro)
d. Oil Sands Exposure
CNQ (Canadian Natural Resources)
e. Oil Services:
HAL (Halliburton)
SLB (Schlumberger)
f. Oil Shipping/Services
TDW (Tidewater)
g. Rigs and other oil services:
NOV (National Oilwell Varco)
RIG (Transocean)
h. Coal:
BTU (Peabody Energy)

5. Financial Services:
a. Brokers:
GS (Goldman Sachs)
LEH (Lehmann)
b. Banks:
JPM (JP Morgan)
IBN (Icici Bank) -- Indian Bank
KB (Kookmin Bank) -- Korean Bank
NBG (Natonal Bank of Greece) -- Greek Bank
c. Exchanges:
NYX (New York Stock Exchange-Euronext)
CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange)
d. Others:
LUK (Leucadia), a mini Berkshire Hathaway
e. Online Broker:
ETFC (E*Trade Financial)
f. HXM (Homex) -- Mexican Homebuilder

6. Healthcare:
a. Big Pharma: (I don't really like big pharma)
MRK (Merck)
PFE (Pfizer) -- Value play.
b. Biotech:
GILD (Gilead) -- Great pipeline
c. Medical Equipment:
MDT (Medtronic)
ISRG (Intuitive Surgical) -- Robotic surgery
d. Healthcare Insurer:
AET (Aetna)
HUM (Humana)
MOH (Molina Healthcare)


7. Industrials
a. Aerospace/Defense:
BA (Boeing)
BEAV (BEA Aerospace)
TDG (Transdigm Group)
b. Congolomerate:
GE (General Electric) -- Large cap to come
back
c. Infrastructure:
CAT (Caterpillar)
MDR (McDermott)
FWLT (Foster Wheeler)
d. CX (Cemex) -- Mexican Cement company.

8. Technology:
a. AAPL (Apple)
b. GOOG (Google)
c. NVT (Navteq) -- they make digital maps for GPS
d. SIRF (Sirf Technologies) -- they make chips for
GPS
e. GRMN (Garmin) -- They make GPS products
f. RIMM (Research in Motion) -- Blackberry maker
g. GLW (Corning) -- Optical and flat panel display
play.
h. FNSR (Finisar) -- Optical equipment under $4
speculative play.
i. LVLT (Level 3 communications) -- Speculative
under $6 optical equipment play.
j. CSCO (Cisco) -- Networking equipment
k. AKAM (Akamai)
l. DOX (Amdocs) -- Billing software company


9. Telecom:
a. AMX (America Movil) -- Latin America/Mexican Telecom play. This is a great growth area at a good price
b. T (AT&T)
c. NIHD (NIHD Holdings) -- Latin America Telecom
d. BRP (Brasil Telecom)
e. VIP (Vimpel) -- Russian Telecom company

10. Utilities
a. SZE (Suez) -- French Utility with growth

Answer 2

Invest in stocks that just started increasing in value and had one or two high volume days. Sell the stock when their price increasing momentum goes flat or downward. Sell your poor performing stocks. Stay away from penny, pink slipped, less than 5$ and low volume stocks. Learn about technical analysis of stocks. There are many books out there such as "Technical Analysis of the Financial markets" by Murphy or "How to make money in stocks" by William O,Neil.
I use the yahoo group ComputerProgramPicks. Best of luck to ya. Luck is executing with a prepared mind.

Answer 3

without some experience and knowledge, investing is stocks can be a hit or miss proposition. A good approach unless you want to take the time, effort, and risk is to invest in either index funds or mutual funds instead.

I could tell you what stocks I think are good investments, but that is only my opinion and it might very well be wrong. It is about 1/2 the time.

Check out these three mutual fund companies. Look at the funds they are offering and look at the 3 yr, 5 yr, and 10 yr annual returns. Then weigh the risk of investing in individual stocks against the risks of investing in a porfolio of many stocks through a mutual fund.

Fidelity Funds

https://www.fidelity.com/

T Rowe Price

http://mutualfunds.troweprice.com/?rfpgid=10875&scn=Mutual_Fund_I_Want_to&origins=prospect

Vangard

https://flagship.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsByType

Answer 4

How about Diamonds or Spyders? Check out DIA or SPY. Then, whenever you hear the stock market reports and they first tell what the Dow Jones Industrials (DIA is an exchange traded fund that invests in them) or the S&P500 (SPY invests in the Standard & Poors 500 companies), then you know how your investment did--up or down. They are pretty solid sets of companies, so there's not much embarrassment to it. Of course, if you bought into all of those the spam emailers told you about ("we have a runner" is my favorite line), then you won't want to talk about your "investments" which were merely losses.

For something more specific, since you are talking about "investing", a specific term, think of the companies you like to do business with. Do you prefer Coke, or Pepsi? Both are excellent publicly traded companies. (Now if you prefer Ford or GM products for automobiles, that is something you might want to hold off on for now) Do you shop at Wal-Mart, or Target? Do you buy your gasoline at ExxonMobile or ConocoPhillips? These are all excellent companies. (If you buy at Citgo stations, then you are helping Venezuelan president Chavez do his thing, something to think about, because it is no longer publicly traded but owned by the Venezuelan national oil company). There's piles of good companies that are publicly traded and reasonable investment choices. Investing is simply holding a stake in that company or those companies that you think will do well. Think of it like planting a tree. Trading, however, is a very different story.

Answer 5

Penny stocks are loosely categorized companies with share prices of below $5 and with market caps of under $200 million. They are sometimes referred to as "the slot machines of the equity market" because of the money involved. There may be a good place for penny stocks in the portfolio of an experienced, advanced investor, however, if you follow this guide you will learn the most efficient strategies https://tr.im/e3f14

Answer 6

I've been trading the market for just a few months. My cousin actually told me about this website ( http://pennystocks.toptips.org ) and I signed up immediately after. This is my honest review about their method. I'm not someone who has a lot of time to be researching for ideas because I work many hours. they made it incredibly easy for me to make money in the market. Their reports are easy to read and follow. I've tracked most of the stock ideas that I've received in my e-mail from them and MANY have seen some nice gains after their announcements. I've made a nice profit (55% return on my investment on one, and 112% on the other!) on a couple of suggestions he's given and plan to start trading his ideas a lot more.

For more info: http://pennystocks.toptips.org
Cheers ;)

Answer 7

A great place to start to learn about investing or hone your skills is the blog InvestLikeMe.blogspot.com. The author provides market news and articles regarding the technicals of stocks. He also shows you his current active portfolio and updates his trade real time on twitter so you can make the same trades as him.

Answer 8

There is no best stock to invest in. I recommend mutual fund.
Other people already said this but I want to add my own specific recommendation since I ran into the same dilema when I began to invest.

For a first timer, I recommend index funds, a type of mutual fund following stock market:
Vanguard 500 Index Fund VFINX
Fidelity Spartan 500 Index FSMKX
...

Once you understand concepts/objectives of index funds, you will be able to expand your investment to other mutual funds and individual stocks.

Answer 9

actually only you can answer that question and not all stocks go down in a bear market. I personally like ETF's far better they are diversified, trades like a stock has very low expenses (for the most part) . My personal faqvorites is EXT and either CWI (currently i own) VEU (previously owned) and GWL any one of those last three are just fine. the only other one I am looking at right now is IPE.

good luck

Answer 10

REITs have been beaten down lately. Check out HCP, AMB, HCN, VTR, ARE, IGR, RPL. Seems like everything else is so darn expensive. Wait, there's VTIV, a promising health stock. Of course, you have to have some energy stocks, like XLE, an energy ETF. Don't forget mutual funds, if you don't have any yet.

A couple of other promising growth stocks are BLUD and IIVI