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How about some stock tips!
I hardly consider myself a financial guru, but here are some basics I've learned over the last several years:
Like many of the best things in life, conquering the stock market is all about balance. The trick is to balance low-risk, low-reward investments (usually huge corporations with steady profit margins) with high-risk, high-reward investments. Investing in say, an alternate fuel company or a new product/company, is very risky and most of the time you won't make any money. But sometimes you'll get lucky and it will really take off and earn you a nice profit when you finally sell the stock.
I invested in Raising Cane's back when they were a tiny chain restaurant with locations only in Baton Rouge. Now they are a national brand with hundreds of locations in pretty much every state. Needless to say, I was able to get my wife a very nice birthday present the next day when I eventually sold that share of stock for about 150x what I had paid for it. Most high-risk investments are busts though, so don't get the idea that it's easy to predict success. It's very hard, and even professionals like Dave Ramsey and Warren Buffett miss the mark a lot of the time.
You have to balance the high-risk stuff with some very low-risk investments to guarantee that you don't actually lose money. Simple government bonds, or investments in massive corporations like Disney, give you a steady safety net of money in case the market is bare for a while or if some investments go bad. These aren't what make you the big money, but they keep you from losing big money, so they are essential to any average Joes like me playing around in the stock market.
Another obvious tip would be to not have more investments than you can keep an eye on. Sometimes a stock can plummet out of nowhere (like the Blue Bell controversy a week ago) and you can't just forget about it or you will lose big money. Imagine for example, a guy bought 4 shares of Blue Bell stock for $500 a piece last month. All of sudden news of the listeria outbreak surfaces and the value of the stock plummets overnight from $525 to $25 as investors panic to sell. The guy doesn't notice the plummeting stock and in one day his Blue Bell stock goes from a potential profit of $100 (25x4) to a huge loss of $1900. Most losses aren't that obvious or dramatic, but they can happen, and you have to be alert for any signs of trouble.
Also investing in competing companies is rarely profitable, just pick one and stick with it. Sometimes you'll pick the better one, sometimes not. Example: Owning stock in Netflix and Blockbuster is foolish, since they are direct competitors. Unless both stocks are really surging up, pick one or the other.
Lastly, and most importantly, treat stock investing like you hopefully would treat gambling and don't let it consume you. Realize that you have to be responsible with your money, especially if you're the head of the family. I never, ever invest money taken from my or my family's savings, checking, or emergency accounts. When I first started investing, I would take a small section of my paycheck each month and invest it. I always set a limit and never invested a penny more. Once I became fairly good at it, I stopped taking out of my paycheck and instead invested with profits from previous investments. In a way, I haven't ever lost money on the stock market in the sense that my "real life" bank accounts have never been touched by my investing. I'm risking money from previous investment profits, instead of money from work, etc., so my financial safety is never in jeopardy. I keep some of my investment profits, but most of the time I immediately plug it back into a new investment. "The house" will win a lot, but I'm playing with its money instead of my own. The result is a steady, reliable source of money. You have to be disciplined about it, though.
If you're a novice and want to learn about the stock market and investments. I highly recommend any books by Dave Ramsey to help you get started. He explains it in a way anyone can understand. Good luck.
