MoneyJog.com

Hello again and welcome to MoneyJog.com.

I hope everyone had a chance to get out and vote today, I did and it only took me eight minutes.

It looks as though now is the time to be purchasing stocks again. Markets recently have seen the DOW become rather stable over 11,000. It had fallen below 11,000 once recently and has since returned to 11,100.

Today I was watching CNBC and an analyst from JP Morgan was asked his view on the market. His response was something along the lines of “I say just throw a dart, and buy stocks”. I found it to be a hilarious statement. But it looks like markets may be moving higher into 2011 years end. November alone is a prime time for investing also. The market supposedly on average returns 3.1% during the month of November after mid term elections.

What should you buy? Here are some names that you may strongly consider holding for one year.

• Panera Breads (PNRA)
• Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG)
• Citigroup (C)
• Apple (AAPL)
• Best Buy (BBY)
• GM after IPO (N/A)
• VFC Corp (VFC)
• Ebay (EBAY)
• Amazon.com (AMZN)
• Starbucks (SBUX)

These are all companies that may make investing for the beginner easy and likely successful if done well. There are 10 companies on this list, so for the next 10 days I will post a review on one of these names until all names have been covered. Please be sure to follow along if you would like to become better at understanding the stock market, following stocks, technical analysis, how to pick good companies, or how to invest/trade and how it will affect your long term future.

The stock market is important to your economy, which means it should be important to you and everyone around you. If you can care about the environment, you can care about the economy and you should.

Did you know that the stock market can MAKE or lose you money? It’s a simple game, in a sense it is gambling on the companies you give money to every day.

I know some people might proclaim “a game? In no way is the stock market a game!!” but these are the people who shroud the simplicity of investing with complex items when it’s not all THAT complicated to do with success.

Could you imagine, adding 8% to your savings annually versus the less than 2% you earn in the bank? Last year I returned roughly 35% to my portfolio.

Now that you thought of that on a one year level… think about your entire lifetime. Obviously a much more grand scale. I do not believe you can “make it rich” in the modern world without SOME SORT of participation in the stock market during your lifetime. Maybe now is not the best time for you to start investing, maybe you just don’t feel CONFIDENT in managing money.

Consider this… If you can save money, you are financially qualified to start investing. Saving money is half the battle!

The other half is not losing money. Simple in theory and not impossible to do. Hundreds of thousands of people invest in stocks and if an 18 year college student (that’s me 4 years ago!) can figure it out, you can too with a little help. Please consider your long term financial goals. NOW is the time (if your a college student) to start positioning yourself for YOUR future. The economy is all around us, and your a part of it even if you don’t participate in the stock market specifically. Take advantage of that. You know what you like and dislike, chances are a million other people feel the same way. They like Chipotle. They like The North Face brands. They like Apple products.

Look at that… now you have some good names to start looking up information on! That was easy…

Keep coming back to MoneyJog.com and after our review of the above 10 companies, we will start discussing entry and exits into positions using some simple tools and techniques.