Expert: Steve Hach - 4/11/2008

Question
i was online and saw a video for investools.. what do you know about this? the video really caught my attention but of course they want to charge you 200 a month for 6 months...
i am a begining investor and i am looking for a product or site that has everything right there in front of me like "investools" but if i pay that price i will have nothing left to invest. what is the opinion of this site that you have heard?
thanks for the help

Answer
Kevin,

there is no way in hell I would pay 1200$ for some investor course and internet tools.

You can get a lot of tools for free on the internet or via a free download.

yahoo finance is a great place to start.

Just to give you an example, I work for valuengine.com, we offer a ton of stuff to clients and it only costs 19.95$/month.  In some cases we sell our professional software package to hedge fund managers and Wall ST. professionals for 200$/month so investools is really ripping people off if they are charging 1200$ for six months.

If I were you, I would take the 200$/month and get subscription to the Wall St. Journal and New York Times, I would buy some basic books like "investing for dummies", anything by suze ormond on investing basics, and I would consider an account with a low cost internet broker like folio f/n--19.95$ month for unlimited trades with some timing restrictions.

The biggest thing in finance is to always remember that people are trying to make money off of YOU, you have to weed them out and keep as much of your money as possible flowing into your investments.

Read the above-mentioned books, follow the markets via the WSJ and NYT, use yahoo finance or google finance along with a spreadsheet like excel to practice "virtual trading" for a while before you put any money at risk.  Do this for at least 6 months.

In the meantime, put the money you would have paid to investools in a CD or something--use http://bankdeals.blogspot.com/ or similar sites  to find the highest return.

And, always, always, ALWAYS beware of anyone trying to take your money in exchange for their "foolproof" or "guaranteed" system for making money in the markets.

The best way to achieve success is to put money away consistently for a very long time.  If you try to get rich quick you will probably lose your shirt.  Slow and steady is best.

Best,

Steve