Investment Essentials: Market Cap

Stock can be classified further than simply growth, value, etc. Most of the time, they are also classified by their market capitalization. It's a fancy term that means size. If you ever hear someone talking about a large cap or a mid-cap or even a small cap, this is what they are referring to.

A large-cap stock is a stock in a company that is worth over $10 billion. These are generally harder stocks to get a piece of for a value because they are generally stocks of well-known track record proven companies. Most believe that because a company has been around for a long time and because they are a large-cap, they are unsinkable. However, one only need remember the history of the Titanic to know that there is no such thing as unsinkable. I would however argue that they are harder to kill than a small-cap.

Investment Essentials: Stock Types

It is quite often that stocks will be categorized as either growth stocks, income stocks, or even value stocks. What these terms mean however can be quite confusing for someone who thinks that stocks are simply just stocks. That being said, let's go over what they are and how to use the terms if we want to use them in the future to describe prospective stocks.

A value stock is essentially a stock that is currently selling for far less than it is actually worth. Keep in mind however that this term can be used loosely as each stock is evaluated differently by each type of investor. What I may deem as a value stock may not necessarily be what another investor who has looked at the stock deems to be a value stock.

Investment Essentials: Market Directions

Bull market, bear market, sideways market - terms that are often referred to when investors are trying to describe what the market is doing. Like with all activities, terms that are unique to that specific activity are created over time. That is exactly where bull, bear, and sideways have sprung forth. 

When someone says that the market is very bullish, they are stating that we are in a bull market. This generally means that prices are going up and "charging" forward like a bull. Investors are throwing more and more money into the market. By doing so, the market goes up and investments generally look really good. This is a great time to already have your investments in place because you can simply watch your money go up, seemingly with any investment. Even the bad investments can still see small upward mobility in a bull market. 

New SA Post: GGP REIT Review

Another post has been made by yours truly on Seeking Alpha. This time I chose to review a competitor of my last review. In this article, I review General Growth Properties (GGP).

General Growth Properties (GGP) is another retail REIT that could potentially represent a future investment. They are a much smaller scale operation than Simon Property Group Inc. but with the smaller scale can come a price advantage when buying into it.

The stock unfortunately offers a smaller yield than the REIT that I last reviewed but remember that diversification is the name of the game if you don't want to get stung.

If you don't want to read the full article, understand the General Growth Properties offers a solid purchase idea if you are looking for a retail REIT with a much smaller NAV ratio than Simon Property Group Inc. (SPG). As the yield is lower than SPG however, it would be important that the investor who chooses to add GGP to their portfolio would probably best find it used in a tax differed portfolio as the tax advantages would be well used with a yield as small as SPG offers at current rates. Full article linked below:

Purchase General Growth Properties: Solid Retail REIT

Investment Essentials: Status of the Market

We know what the market is and we know that stocks are sold there but how does one actually gauge how the market is doing? And what are points? Aren't we trading dollars? 

These are common questions for new investors. Just like anything else, there is a score kept on Wall Street. One just needs to know where to find it. For Wall Street, the easiest way to find your gauge of how the market is doing is to look towards the Dow Jones Industrial Average - often referred by the acronym DJIA. Or, if you don't like the DJIA, you can look towards the S&P 500 (which is what I like to use instead). The DJIA includes some of the most well known companies in the United States. There are 30 companies in the DJIA all together. It is a collection of these stocks that are brought together to tell investors how the market is doing on any given day as it is supposedly seen as an average. 

New SA Post: SPG REIT Review

I have made another post recently on Seeking Alpha. As it is an exclusive article published through their site, I will simply leave a link below.

This time I have chosen to write a full review of Simon Property Group Inc (SPG). The RIET is intriguing and my review goes into good detail of the entire business as whole. I go over their price, yield, net asset value, funds from operations, and of course debt to equity ratio.

If you have ever been interested in owning a piece of a retail REIT, it may be good to become aware of Simon Property Group Inc (SPG) as it is one of if not the biggest of them out there. This does of course come with a premium price but the stock still does boast some good FFO. Full review at the link below:

Simon Property Group Inc.: Cautious Buy

Investment Essentials: The Stock Market

It has come to my attention through emails that were sent to me that my investing 101/102/103 "courses" that I put on the side of my page weren't quite basic enough for a starting investor to learn bit by bit. That being said, it appears that I really need to back up to square one - the basic of the basics. If you have absolutely no interest in knowing the basics step by step, I will label them as "investment essentials" when a post is going to be discussing them. I will also be removing the investing 101/102/103 series and replacing it with a much smaller link that will contain a page for investment education specifically.

**Note: please read the disclaimer listed before continuing**

Investment Essentials: The Stock Market

What is the stock market? The stock market for all intents and purposes is a place where traders and businesses buy and sell stocks and other forms of investments. Different stock of different companies are listed on the exchange under ticker symbols which are basically just short forms of the company name in most cases so that buyers can locate them. For example, General Electric trades under the ticker symbol of GE. If you were looking to buy a portion of GE stock, one only have to search GE on a stock exchange and place a bid for however many shares you want.