Part 1: True Costs of Trading

This blog is meant to provide you with more information on trading costs. Most retail investors don't understand what goes into trading costs. When I first started, the only cost to me was the commission set by the broker to buy the number of shares. $4.95. This is the only cost you'll explicitly pay, but there are more that come up over time. The more I do this and the more I learn, the more I realize how uninformed I really was.

Active vs. Robo Advisors

Almost everyone at some point has worried about money. Where to get it, what to do with it when you have it, how not to lose all of it. The basics. For most people, they don't know enough about the stock market or economics to feel comfortable investing their money on their own, so they turn to money managers. This is where you can get ripped off by the smaller money institutions wit loaded funds and high expense ratios. With the bigger firms there is more to be offered for much less. Below we'll get into what active investing is and the alternative to it if you like it but can't do it yourself. Then we'll try and scrape the surface on the recent financial innovation in robo advisors.

Enjoy the read.

BUD tracking the 50 day moving average

Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV  [BUD]    

Slow and steady wins the race. Since their rapid drop in stock price back in October/November of 2016 it has been tracking upward, slowly but surely. It has bounced off the 50 day moving average twice now and is creating a pattern.

Ever Hear of NQ Mobile?

NQ Mobile [NQ]  - all numbers and information about company come from finviz.com

I'm sure you haven't. If you have, then you are better than me. NQ Mobile - used to be NetQin Mobile - is headquartered in Beijing making it a Chinese stock. The basis of their business is supplying mobile internet services to the people of China. They have products under their umbrella in the fields of mobile security, privacy, optimization, cloud stuff, and family protection. 

Interest Rates, Among Other Things

If you are familiar with interest rates then you'll probably understand everything I am about to say. If you do not, then this may be helpful to understanding them a little further.

The reason I want to try and explain this in a more basic way is because for the longest time I had no idea what people meant or were talking about when they said, "the Fed is going to raise interest rates" and "I wonder if Yellen will increase interest rates during the next meeting." 

Bill Ackman out of VRX

     Word on the street earlier today was that Bill Ackman was selling out of Valeant Pharmaceuticals [VRX] and stepping down from the board of directors. Turns out those reports are right as it has been confirmed by many that the huge block trade made just after 4:00pm was the sale of all of Pershing Square's shares. Ackman sold 27.2 million shares for $11.00 per.