Investing Basics: Successful Investing for Beginning (and Advanced) Investors

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Featured Investing Basics Article

Starting an Investment Program With Dollar Cost Averaging Dollar cost averaging and value averaging provide a clear path for investors to follow.

	Is R-I-S-K Really a Four-Letter Word? It can be—but in the investment world, risk is impossible to avoid. The trick is how to get risk to work for you, and not against you.
	The First Step When entering a 401(k) plan, you may experience nightmares trying to figure out how to achieve a proper asset allocation with your first contribution. Where to start with your initial investment.
	The Psychology Behind Common Investor Mistakes A look at the top 10 economic indicators can help you narrow your focus.
	Your Order Please: A Guide to the Different Ways to Buy and Sell Securities There are many ways to give buy and sell instructions to a broker—and just as many ways to get burned if you mess up. A rundown of the most common orders.

Starting an Investment Program With Dollar Cost Averaging The first step is always the hardest. And individual investors taking their first steps in an investment program must also confront a sea of stock market uncertainty. Some plunge headlong into the market with all their savings. Others barely wet their feet before heading back to the safe shores of their money market funds. The problem, however, with these two all-or-nothing approaches is one of timing—the risk of entering the market at a high point in the market cycle. Dollar cost averaging and its variations, such as value averaging, offer investors an alternative, allowing them to ease into the market over time, which reduces the timing risk. The mechanical aspects of averaging provide an investment discipline, require no market forecasts and are relatively simple to initiate. Most mutual funds offer automatic investment and exchange programs—a cruise control for your investment plan that eliminates the more routine aspects of maintaining an averaging plan. Continue to Full Article