TradeKing is an online brokerage featuring a low commission of $4.95. For a short time, if you open account at TradeKing, fund it with $2,500 within 30 days and make a trade within 180 days, you can earn a $50 bonus. You’ll also have to maintain a $2,500 minimum bonus for six months, otherwise TradeKing ... Continue reading this article…

Because I believe this economic crisis will end within the next few years or sooner, I took today’s 777+ point decline in the Dow and 8.8 percent decline in the S&P 500 as a sign that the stock market, as a whole is on sale. I opened an individual brokerage account at Vanguard after market hours ... Continue reading this article…

When I heard the news that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is making $85 billion available to American International Group in the form of loans, one of my first questions was about the source of the money. Does the Federal Reserve keep an emergency fund available to bail out companies during financial crises ... Continue reading this article…

If you’ve suddenly come upon $1,000 you didn’t have the day before, you may get the urge to celebrate. $1,000 doesn’t open many new opportunities to you these days, but there are a number of options. Kiplinger has published a special with 37 ways to invest $1,000, but I have a few suggestions of my ... Continue reading this article…

August 8 update: This is now confirmed. This is unconfirmed but in the last few hours, two employees at TIAA-CREF have written to Consumerism Commentary to share the knowledge that workers in the the Charlotte, North Carolina office are being laid off by management at this very moment. The layoffs began on Monday and will ... Continue reading this article…

Robert Shiller, a professor of economics at Yale University, shares advice about investing he learned in graduate school. One needs to think antisocially to excel in investing, to resist the patterns of thinking that seem mysteriously to arrive simultaneously in the minds of millions of people around the world. People do not trust their own ... Continue reading this article…

The Dow and the S&P 500 indexes were both up 2.5 percent and the Nasdaq index was up 3.1 percent today. Is this a sign of things to come? I wouldn’t mind if it were. My 401(k) has been decimated this year. That’s a literal decimation, a reduction of 10 percent of its value. Based on the short ... Continue reading this article…

I don’t think “market timing” is a good investment strategy — in fact, it’s not a strategy at all — but it can be a worthwhile experiment if played with money you don’t mind losing. One way to time the market is to buy low-cost exchange-traded funds (ETFs). These investments act as mutual funds — ... Continue reading this article…

The idea of “getting rich slowly” may well be a fallacy. While slow and steady is a great method of accumulating wealth over long periods of time thanks to compounding interest and returns, the power of inflation — real inflation, not government-reported inflation, eats away at the value of your funds almost ensuring you will ... Continue reading this article…