What factors you have do you count on to speculate effectively?
"Strategy would be my top factor.  While this may be implied, I do think it helps to have an idea of what is causing the buy and sell signals in speculating as I'd rather follow a strategy than try to figure things out completely from scratch that doesn't quite make sense to me. There are generally a couple of different schools of analysis that may be worth passing along: Fundamental Analysis:Fundamental analysis of a business involves analyzing its financial statements and health, its management and competitive advantages, and its competitors and markets. When applied to futures and forex, it focuses on the overall state of the economy, interest rates, production, earnings, and management. When analyzing a stock, futures contract, or currency using fundamental analysis there are two basic approaches one can use; bottom up analysis and top down analysis. The term is used to distinguish such analysis from other types of investment analysis, such as quantitative analysis and technical analysis. Technical Analysis:In finance, technical analysis is a security analysis methodology for forecasting the direction of prices through the study of past market data, primarily price and volume. Behavioral economics and quantitative analysis use many of the same tools of technical analysis, which, being an aspect of active management, stands in contradiction to much of modern portfolio theory. The efficacy of both technical and fundamental analysis is disputed by the efficient-market hypothesis which states that stock market prices are essentially unpredictable. There are tools like ""Stock Screeners"" that will let you filter based on various criteria to use each analysis in a mix.  There are various strategies one could use.  Wikipedia under Stock Speculator lists: ""Several different types of stock trading strategies or approaches exist including day trading, trend following, market making, scalping (trading), momentum trading, trading the news, and arbitrage.""  Thus, I'd advise research what approach are you wanting to use as the ""Make it up as we go along losing real money all the way"" wouldn't be my suggested approach. There is something to be said for there being numerous columnists and newsletter peddlers if you want other ideas but I would suggest having a strategy before putting one's toe in the water."
I bought a house 6 months ago for $240,000 on an $80k salary am getting by just fine and am able to save money (and I live on Long Island, an extremely expensive area to live). I would look at finding a few more interest rate quotes; for instance, Wells Fargo is offering 4.25% right now for FHA (first time home buyers) loan (which only require 3.5% down). A lower interest rate will lower your monthly payment. Make the banks compete with one another - this little bit of leg-work will save you thousands upon thousands of dollars in the long run). Also, try to negotiate to NOT paying a point down on the mortgage - most of the time they are bull, especially in this economy (banks are desperate for new loans).  However, as others have said, do not assume or count on rent coming in to be able to afford your mortgage (unless you are married). What if your friend moves out and you cannot find another tenant?  However, I strongly recommend you talk to a financial adviser and your bank mortgage loan officer to work out the numbers - you will be surprised what you can afford when you factor in your income tax and mortgage interest write-offs. "The following is based on my Experian credit scoring feedback and experience here in the UK over many years.  (And for further information I currently hold a credit score of 999, the highest possible, with 6 credit cards.)  Now I'm assuming that while there may be some differences in particulars in your case due to the difference in locality nevertheless the below should hopefully provide some broad guidelines and reasonable conclusion in your situation: Having a large number of active credit accounts may be seen as a negative.  However having a large number of settled accounts should on the contrary have a positive effect on your score.  As you keep your accounts mostly settled, I think having another card will not be to your detriment and should in time be beneficial. A large total credit balance outstanding may count against you.  (But see the next point.)   Having your total outstanding debt on all credit accounts be a smaller proportion of your total available credit, counts in your favour.  This means having more cards for the same amount of credit in use, is net-net in your favour.  It also has the effect of making even larger outstanding credit balances (as in point 2) to be a lower percentage of your total available credit, and consequently will indicate lower risk to lenders.   It appears from my experience the higher the highest credit limit on a single card you are issued (and are managing responsibly e.g. either paid off or used responsibly) the better. Needless to say, any late payments count against you.  The best thing to do then is to set up a direct debit for the minimum amount to be paid like clockwork every month.  Lenders really like consistent payers. :) New credit accounts initially will count against you for a while.  But as the accounts age and are managed responsibly or settled they will eventually count in your favour and increase your score. Making many credit applications in a short space of time may count against you as you may be seen to be credit reliant.  Conclusion: On balance I would say get the other card.  Your credit score might be slightly lower for a couple of months but eventually it will be to your benefit as per the above.    Having another card also means more flexibility and more more options if you do end up with a credit balance that you want to finance and pay off over a period as cheaply as possible.   In the UK the credit card companies are falling over themselves trying to offer one ""interest free"" or 0% ""balance transfer"" offers.  Of course they're not truly 0% since you typically have to pay a ""transfer fee"" of a couple of percent. Still, this can be quite cheap credit, much much cheaper than the headline APR rates actually associated with the cards.  The catch is that any additional spending on such cards are paid off first (and attract interest at the normal rate until paid off).  Usually also if you miss a payment the interest rate reverts to the normal rate.  But these pitfalls are easily avoided (pay by direct debit and don't use card you've got a special deal on for day to day expenses.) So, having more cards available is then very useful because you then have choice.  You can roll expensive debts to the cheapest lender at your disposal for as long as they'll offer, and then simply not use that card for any purchases (while paying off the balance as cheaply as possible), meanwhile using another card for day to day expenses." &gt; You know whats more effective then drug tests at work? Intelligence testing.  Not much of a reason to take the risk when we have an abundance of applicants in MOST fields. Maybe not the one the article talks about, but there is absolutely no reason to take that risk as a business.    &gt; Maybe calm yourself down and then stop to think about what would be more important at work, having a clean drug test or intelligence?  You do realize there are people who are intelligent that don't smoke weed daily, right?  And there are other factors like motivation and being happy. Weed smokers almost always lack motivation and wouldn't be smoking if they were truly happy  There is no shortage of applicants in most fields. No need to hire these people and take an unnecessary risk. There are several factors here. Firstly, there's opportunity cost, i.e. what you would get with the money elsewhere. If you have higher interest opportunities (investing, paying down debt) elsewhere, you could be paying that down instead. There's also domino effects: by reducing your liquid savings to or below the minimum, you can't move any of it into tax advantaged retirement accounts earning higher interest. Then there's the insurance costs. You are required to buy extra insurance to protect your lender. You should factor in the extra insurance you would buy vs the insurance required. Given that you can buy the car yourself, catastrophic insurance may not be necessary, or you may prefer a higher deductible than your lender will allow. If you're not sufficiently capitalized, you may need gap insurance to cover when your car depreciates faster than your loan is paid down. A 30 percent payment should be enough to not need it though. Finally, there's some value in having options. If you have the loan and the cash, you can likely pay it off without penalty. But it will be harder to get the loan if you don't finance it. Maybe you can take out a loan against the car later, but I haven't looked into the fees that might incur.  If it's any help, I'm in the last stretch of a 3 year car loan. At the time paying in cash wasn't an option, and having done it I recognize that it's more complicated than it seems. "Investing is balancing the desire for return against the various risks that your money is faced with. There's also a recognition that an investment will be in place for some extended period of time. Speculation is seeking short-term maximum return, without protecting yourself against risk.  ""Speculation"" or ""Speculators"" is often thrown out as a pejorative, but you need speculation to have a healthy market." Efficient Frontier has an article from years ago about the small-cap and value premiums out there that would be worth noting here using the Fama and French data. Eugene Fama and Kenneth French (F/F) have shown that one can explain   almost all of the returns of equity portfolios based on only three   factors: market exposure, market capitalization (size), and   price-to-book (value). Wikipedia link to the factor model which was the result of the F/F research. "duffbeer's answers are reasonable for the specific question asked, but it seems to me the questioner is really wanting to know what stocks should I buy, by asking ""do you simply listen to 'experts' and hope they are right?"" Basic fundamental analysis techniques like picking stocks with a low PE or high dividend yield are probably unlikely to give returns much above the average market because many other people are applying the same well-known techniques." a)  Are there any predictive factors for the success/failure of your trades. i.e. Volatility has some predictive power on the failure  of the trades, therefore, you may want to fine tune the strategy such that when vol &gt; x, it stays out (or even reverses).  b) i'll make a quick subreddit.