The Tycoon Report

Most Popular Investing Questions

Wednesday, May 14, 2008 | Wayne Mulligan

We'll keep today's TickerHound column short and sweet -- We'll be back with our regular market commentary next week.

For now, let's take a quick look at some of the most popular questions this week!

Top 10 TickerHound Questions

   1. Where do you guys put your money?
      
   2. Why are people saying that Alan Greenspan had a lot to do with our current economic predicament?
      
   3. What's everybody going to do with their IRS stimulus checks?
      
   4. Ok, China's a great place to be - but what stocks can we invest in for the long term?
      
   5. Why is depreciation a positive value in the Operating portion in the Cashflow statement?
      
   6. What will happen to food prices after Doha talks?
      
   7. Is it too late to get into commodities?
      
   8. Does it make sense to reinvest dividends or to take them out and invest elsewhere?
      
   9. Visa - Is $90 per share still a good price to get in or too expensive?
      
  10. With the massive oil discovery in the Bakken Formation, wich company is better position to take advantage?
      

Top TickerHounds

Well, it looks like we had the "usual suspects" at the top of the hill again this week. I was happy to see some old faces here again too - EthanR has been pretty busy with his new gig over at The Tycoon Report, but he still managed to find the time to dust off his keyboard and dash off a few solid answers this week.

ChaosNantuko has also been back in full force on TickerHound - good to have you back buddy!

SundarKambam has also been fairly active this week. After speaking with Sundar a few times, I know he's typically traveling for business and finds it hard to make some free time. But as you can see, even a successful businessman like Sundar makes the time to help educate and empower other investors. Thanks so much Sundar!

Per usual, Oldman, Grudun and MNSL were at the tippy top of the charts - awesome job guys!

But this week we had a new addition to the Top TickerHounds List (which can be viewed by clicking here): gap. Welcome aboard and great job this week!

I'd love to know what the significance in your username is... does it relate to Gap Stores at all? :)

In fact, we have a lot of folks on the site with obscure usernames... I'd love to know where you guys get the inspiration for them. ChaosNantuko, Dragonsbane, DaveDiggz, etc. I'd like everybody to send an email to me this week at: feedback@tickerhound.com with a line or two about the significance of your username. I'll share the most interesting story right here next week!

Special Thanks...

I also wanted to say thank you to another Top TickerHound - 7million7years. As I'm sure you might've noticed, he's been visibly absent from the TickerHound community for the last week or two. Reason being, he has recently retired (you can read all about it on his blog by clicking here) and decided to do some traveling. He even went to Omaha to hear the Oracle speak at his annual shareholder meeting.
But better than that, he stopped in New York and made some time to have a cup of coffee (well, technically it was hot chocolate) with yours truly!

We had a great conversation and I wanted to thank him again for his time and feedback. Also, for those of you who have a dream of running your own business and retiring early, definitely check out 7million7years.com. He's constantly sharing his knowledge, experiences and framework for getting wealthy and staying wealthy without betting the farm on speculative investments.

It was great to finally meet you!

Challenge from Two Weeks Ago

Again, my apologies for the delay in announcing this week's TickerHound Challenge winners. Thanks for being so patient and understanding while we got our technical issues all taken care of.

So, without further adieu, here are your winners...

For the question, "Which stock are you most Bearish on right now?", the Best Answer went to Hillcat88! For the record, Hillcat88 also won the top spot for the question, "Which stock are you most Bullish on right now". I think we have a serious analyst in our midst. Click here to read Hillcat's answer now.

And on our next question, "What are the pro's and con's of value investing?", the prize goes to 7million7years! Click here to check out what he had to say on value investing.

For our final question, "Is technical analysis still applicable in a "news driven" market like the one we're in now?", the winner is - and this was a tough one - our Top TickerHound, EthanR! Great work Ethan!

This Week's Challenge

I decided to use some of my experiences on Wall Street as inspiration for this week's challenge. Let me explain...

When I was first getting started on Wall Street I began my career in sales - yes, yours truly well was a cold calling, retail stock broker. And while it certainly wasn't my favorite job, it definitely taught be a lot about how to speak and write persuasively.

It's so important to be able to convey your views and opinions effectively to another person if you hope to do well in business, and that's why I think it's vital you and all of the other TickerHounds out there practice "selling" whenever you can.

So for this week's contest, I'm asking some fairly open ended questions that will require you to put on your "salesman's cap" and really try to "sell" me on your point of view. This is going to be tough, but I think you can handle it!

Here goes...

   1. Why should I set up a retirement account? What's the benefit?
   2. Why should I even bother investing in the market?
   3. If Buffett says individual investors would be better buying index funds then why should I buy stocks?

Good luck!




Wayne Mulligan
CEO
TickerHound