When you become interested in a stock or mutual fund you can call your broker and he will send you reports on how the company is doing, what their management is like and what might be the projected earnings for the company and how the industry is doing. Great information.

You will apply yourself to this mound of papers to determine if you want to buy the equity. You might also send for more reports from independent analysts such as Morningstar. You will become buried in papers. That is what the brokerage company wants. The reason is very simple. If you buy the stock after doing all that research and it goes down instead of up they are not responsible for your stupidity. Of course, if it goes up they can take credit for providing all that great information.

Now lets think for a minute. You received all that information that was already printed so it could be sent to you. It makes me ask when was that printed? How old is the information? If I can get all this stuff about the company it means that anyone can. What it boils down to is the information is just that - information and none of it will tell you that the stock will go up further because the whole world knows.

These brochures are made to help you BUY not SELL. In my years of experience I call them a work of fiction. No brokerage company is going to issue a bad report about a company at least until it is ready for bankruptcy and by then your investment dollars have disappeared.

I know your next question. If I cant rely on those reports how am I going to buy anything? There is a better way. You will want to see the price action of the stock or mutual fund. All stocks undulate as they go up or down and you want to know the major trend.

On the Internet you can go to a web site www.bigcharts.com and type in the symbol of the stock or fund and request a weekly chart going back for about to 5 years. What you are interested in is what is it doing during the past 6 months to one year. If the trend is up it is a buy and if the trend is down or sideways dont buy it or if you own it sell. See how easy that is. Brokers and financial planners wont like it because it takes all the mystery out of buying stock and they dont want you to know this simple procedure.

Analyst reports give you lots of useless information, but will not tell if the stock will go up after you buy it. If it isnt going up dont buy it.

Al Thomas

Albert W. Thomas has spent most of his life in the field of finance. In 1965 he founded an insurance holding company, Security Dynamics Investment Corporation, after having been an agent and General Agent for several life insurance companies. In 1970 he became cofounder and president of Real Life Estate, Inc., that marketed a unique real estate and life insurance package.

After he became interested in commodities he bought a seat for his personal trading on the Chicago Open Board of Trade, which is now known as the MidAmerica Commodity Exchange. Later he became a full time trader and also acted as a commodity broker for a few select clients. By fellow floor traders Al is considered to be an excellent technical analyst much of which is outlined in his book IF IT DOESN'T GO UP, DON'T BUY IT! It became a best seller on Amazon.

In 1981 he sold his membership on the Exchange and with his wife, Carolyn, lived full time aboard their 41' ketch, the Aumakua (which means guardian angel in Hawaiian). They sailed in Florida and the Bahamas for two years.

He founded World Trading Group in 1984 that grew to the seventh largest introducing commodity brokerage firm in the U.S. with 35 offices from coast to coast, Alaska and Canada. It was sold in 1992.

Al is a graduate of Northwestern University with a B.S. degree in Commerce and is a member of MENSA. He is now president of Williamsburg Investment Company that syndicates his weekly financial column since 1999 to more than 300 newspapers and writes a financial market letter called Over My Shoulder that is quoted in Barron?s and many other publications. A 3-month trial subscription is available on his web site. He is a regular guest on several financial radio talk shows.

His favorite pastime is fishing.

Mr. Thomas is available for speaking engagements. Please call 321-453-5300 for more information.